would any others know it, I wondered? Would there be any to know
it indeed? In twenty years many die and others pass out of sight; should
I find a friend at all among the living? Since I read the letters which
Captain Bell of the 'Adventuress' had brought me before I sailed for
Hispaniola, I had heard no tidings from my home, and what tidings
awaited me now? Above all what of Lily, was she dead or married or gone?

Mounting my horse I pushed on again at a canter, taking the road past
Waingford Mills through the fords and Pirnhow town, leaving Bungay upon
my left. In ten minutes I was at the gate of the bridle path that runs
from the Norwich road for half a mile or more beneath the steep and
wooded bank under the shelter of which stands the Lodge at Ditchingham.
By the gate a man loitered in the last rays of the sun. I looked at
him and knew him; it was Billy Minns, that same fool who had loosed de
Garcia when I left him bound that I might run to meet my sweetheart.
He was an old man now and his white hair hung about his withered face,
moreover he was unclean and dressed in rags, but I could have fallen on
his neck and embraced him, so rejoiced was I to look once more on one
whom I had known in youth.

Seeing me come he hobbled on his stick to the gate to open it for me,
whining a prayer for alms.

'Does Mr. Wingfield live here?' I said, pointing up the path, and my
breath came quick as I asked.

'Mr. Wingfield, sir, Mr. Wingfield, which of them?' he answered. 'The
old gentleman he's been dead nigh upon twenty years. I helped to dig
his grave in the chancel of yonder church I did, we laid him by his
wife--her that was murdered. Then there's Mr. Geoffrey.'

'What of him?' I asked.

'He's dead, too, twelve year gone or more; he drank hisself to dead
he did. And Mr. Thomas, he's dead, drowned over seas they say, many
a winter back; they're all dead, all dead! Ah! he was a rare one, Mr.
Thomas was; I mind me well how when I let the furriner go--' and he
rambled off into the tale of how he had set de Garcia on his horse after
I had beaten him, nor could I bring him back from it.

Casting him a piece of money, I set spurs to my weary horse and cantered
up the bridle path, leaving the Mill House on my left, and as I went,
the beat of his hoofs seemed to echo the old man's words, 'All dead, all
dead!' Doubtless Lily was dead also, or if she was not dead, when the
tidings came that I had been drowned at sea, she would hav