go with you!'

I pressed the rough soldier's horny hand, and descended into the
fishing-boat. The rope that held us was cast off, the sail mounted up,
and the boat shot out across the bay. Onward she went and on, through
the gathering gloom--a gloom as dark and impenetrable as the future
towards which my life's bark was driving. Soon the long rise and fall
told us that we were over the harbour bar and out in the open channel.
On the land, scattered twinkling lights at long stretches marked the
line of the coast. As I gazed backwards a cloud trailed off from the
moon, and I saw the hard lines of the brig's rigging stand out against
the white cold disk. By the shrouds stood the veteran, holding to a
rope with one hand, and waving the other in farewell and encouragement.
Another groat cloud blurred out the light, and that lean sinewy figure
with its long extended arm was the last which I saw for a weary time of
the dear country where I was born and bred.

Chapter XXXVI. Of the End of it All

And so, my dear children, I come to the end of the history of a
failure--a brave failure and a noble one, but a failure none the less.
In three more years England was to come to herself, to tear the fetters
from her free limbs, and to send James and his poisonous brood flying
from her shores even as I was flying then. We had made the error of
being before our time. Yet there came days when folk thought kindly of
the lads who had fought so stoutly in the West, and when their limbs,
gathered from many a hangman's pit and waste place, were borne amid the
silent sorrow of a nation to the pretty country burial-grounds where
they would have chosen to lie. There, within the sound of the bell which
from infancy had called them to prayer, beneath the turf over which they
had wandered, under the shadow of those Mendip and Quantock Hills which
they loved so well, these brave hearts lie still and peaceful, like
tired children in the bosom of their mother. Requiescant-requiescant in
pace!

Not another word about myself, dear children. This narrative doth
already bristle with I's, as though it were an Argus which is a flash
of wit, though I doubt if ye will understand it. I set myself to tell ye
the tale of the war in the West, and that tale ye have heard, nor will
I be coaxed or cajoled into one word further. Ah! ye know well how
garrulous the old man is, and that if you could but get to Flushing with
him he would take ye to the wars of th