at any time heard from his lips was that he had never incurred debt. It
was a bitter thought that, after so long and hard a struggle with
unkindly circumstance, he might end his life as one of the defeated.

A happier lot was in store for him. At the age of fifty, just when his
health had begun to fail and his energies to show abatement, Ryecroft had
the rare good fortune to find himself suddenly released from toil, and to
enter upon a period of such tranquillity of mind and condition as he had
never dared to hope. On the death of 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