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, 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.
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