Thus, in a word, the situation lay. I staked my life, not upon the honour of Valentine Imroth, but upon a human interest I believed powerful enough to protect me. And this step I took that I might return to Joan and say: “Here is the truth; here is the story which you and I will guard while we live.” The danger could be nothing to me in the face of that which success must mean. I was as a miner lifting his pick for the last time. What hopes and fears I carried to that lonely island, what a burden of doubt and dread! I shall say nothing of my voyage down the Thames, nor of those scenes so often described, and with such feeling, by some of our later day novelists. To me the lower river is ever an echo of the voice of the agitated Pepys, or the more stately tones of the pious Evelyn. A changed river since the great ships deserted the wharves by London Bridge, none the less, she is, in a sense, still the great highway to the kingdoms of the world. Here is that water temple which the giant masts wall in; here all tongues are eloquent of the worship of the sea; here men of all nations commingle in that rare confraternity which has earned our wealth and established our greatness while the centuries have run. A river it is of curdling pools and racing tides, of towering stages and gabled houses; a river of mystery and of darkness, beloved of the city which has deserted her, inseparable from the story of its people. To her true disciples, then, be the keeping of the record. My launch carried me too speedily by creek and pool that I should claim to be of the elect.