an acquaintance, more his friend
than he imagined, the wayworn man of letters learnt with astonishment
that there was bequeathed to him a life annuity of three hundred pounds.
Having only himself to support (he had been a widower for several years,
and his daughter, an only child, was married), Ryecroft saw in this
income something more than a competency. In a few weeks he quitted the
London suburb where of late he had been living, and, turning to the part
of England which he loved best, he presently established himself in a
cottage near Exeter, where, with a rustic housekeeper to look after him,
he was soon thoroughly at home. Now and then some friend went down into
Devon to see him; those who had that pleasure will not forget the plain
little house amid its half-wild garden, the cosy book-room with its fine
view across the valley of the Exe to Haldon, the host's cordial, gleeful
hospitality, rambles with him in lanes and meadows, long talks amid the
stillness of the rural night. We hoped it would all last for many a
year; it seemed, indeed, as though Ryecroft had only need of rest and
calm to become a hale man. But already, though he did not know it, he
was suffering from a disease of the heart, which cut short his life after
little more than a lustrum of quiet contentment. It had always been his
wish to die suddenly; he dreaded the thought of illness, chiefly because
of the trouble it gave to others. On a summer evening, after a long walk
in very hot weather, he lay down upon the sofa in his study, and there--as
his calm face declared--passed from slumber into the great silence.

When he left London, Ryecroft bade farewell to authorship. He told me
that he hoped never to write another line for publication. But, among
the papers which I looked through after his death, I came upon three
manuscript books which at first glance seemed to be a diary; a date on
the opening page of one of them showed that it had been begun not very
long after the writer's settling in Devon. When I