LX. MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
LXI. THE PARISH REGISTER
LXII. A FOOLISH TRIUMPH
LXIII. A COLLISION
LXIV. YET ONCE
LXV. CONCLUSION




WILFRID CUMBERMEDE.




INTRODUCTION.

I am--I will not say how old, but well past middle age. This much I
feel compelled to mention, because it has long been my opinion that no
man should attempt a history of himself until he has set foot upon the
border land where the past and the future begin to blend in a
consciousness somewhat independent of both, and hence interpreting
both. Looking westward, from this vantage-ground, the setting sun is
not the less lovely to him that he recalls a merrier time when the
shadows fell the other way. Then they sped westward before him, as if
to vanish, chased by his advancing footsteps, over the verge of the
world. Now they come creeping towards him, lengthening as they come.
And they are welcome. Can it be that he would ever have chosen a world
without shadows? Was not the trouble of the shadowless noon the
dreariest of all? Did he not then long for the curtained queen--the