ing little but listening much, and
learning all I could of what had chanced in England since I left it some
twenty years before.

At length our voyage came to an end, and on a certain twelfth of June I
found myself in the mighty city of London that I had never yet visited,
and kneeling down in the chamber of my inn, I thanked God that after
enduring so many dangers and hardships, it had pleased Him to preserve
me to set foot again on English soil. Indeed to this hour I count it
nothing short of marvellous that this frail body of a man should survive
all the sorrows and risks of death by sickness, hunger, battle, murder,
drowning, wild beasts, and the cruelty of men, to which mine had been
exposed for many years.

In London I bought a good horse, through the kind offices of the host of
my inn, and on the morrow at daybreak I set out upon the Ipswich road.
That very morning my last adventure befell me, for as I jogged along
musing of the beauty of the English landscape and drinking in the sweet
air of June, a cowardly thief fired a pistol at me from behind a hedge,
purposing to plunder me if I fell. The bullet passed through my hat,
grazing the skull, but before I could do anything the rascal fled,
seeing that he had missed his mark, and I went on my journey, thinking
to myself that it would indeed have been strange, if after passing such
great dangers in safety, I had died at last by the hand of a miserable
foot-pad within five miles of London town.

I rode hard all that day and the next, and my horse being stout and
swift, by half-past seven o'clock of the evening I pulled up upon the
little hill whence I had looked my last on Bungay, when I rode thence
for Yarmouth with my father. Below me lay the red roofs of the town;
there to the right were the oaks of Ditchingham and the beautiful tower
of St. Mary's Church, yonder the stream of Waveney wandered, and before
me stretched the meadow lands, purple and golden with marsh weeds in
bloom. All was as it had been, I could see no change at all, the only
change was in myself. I dismounted, and going to a pool of water near
the roadway I looked at the reflection of my own face. I was changed
indeed, scarcely should I have known it for that of the lad who had
ridden up this hill some twenty years ago. Now, alas! the eyes were
sunken and very sorrowful, the features were sharp, and there was more
grey than black in the beard and hair. I should scarcely have known it
myself,