lose.'

'You are too ready to use your strength, son,' she said, smiling and
kissing me. 'Remember the old Spanish proverb: "He strikes hardest who
strikes last."'

'And remember the other proverb, mother: "Strike before thou art
stricken,"' I answered, and went.

When I had gone some ten paces something prompted me to look back, I
know not what. My mother was standing by the open door, her stately
shape framed as it were in the flowers of a white creeping shrub that
grew upon the wall of the old house. As was her custom, she wore a
mantilla of white lace upon her head, the ends of which were wound
beneath her chin, and the arrangement of it was such that at this
distance for one moment it put me in mind of the wrappings which are
placed about the dead. I started at the thought and looked at her face.
She was watching me with sad and earnest eyes that seemed to be filled
with the spirit of farewell.

I never saw her again till she was dead.

CHAPTER III

THE COMING OF THE SPANIARD

And now I must go back and speak of my own matters. As I have told, it
was my father's wish that I should be a physician, and since I came
back from my schooling at Norwich, that was when I had entered on my
sixteenth year, I had studied medicine under the doctor who practised
his art in the neighbourhood of Bungay. He was a very learned man and an
honest, Grimstone by name, and as I had some liking for the business I
made good progress under him. Indeed I had learned almost all that he
could teach me, and my father purposed to send me to London, there to
push on my studies, so soon as I should attain my twentieth year, that
is within some five months of the date of the coming of the Spaniard.

But it was not fated that I should go to London.

Medicine was not the only thing that I studied in those days, however.
Squire Bozard of Ditchingham, the same who told my father of the coming
of the Spanish ship, had two living children, a son and a daughter,
though his wife had borne him many more who died in infancy. The
daughter was named Lily and of my own age, having been born three weeks
after me in the same year. Now the Bozards are gone from these parts,
for my great-niece, the granddaughter and sole heiress of this son, has
married and has issue of another name. But this is by the way.

From our earliest days we children, Bozards and Wingfields, lived almost
as brothers and sisters, for day by day we met and played togeth