And so are many others of whom I have spoken--Sir Anthony, the Duchess, Master Bertie, and Master Lindstrom. For forty years have passed since these things happened--years of peaceful, happy life, which have gone by more swiftly, as it seems to me in the retrospect, than the four years of my wanderings. The Lindstroms sought refuge in England in the second year of the Queen, and settled in Lowestoft under the Duchess of Suffolk's protection, and did well and flourished as became them; nor indeed did they find, I trust, others ungrateful, though I experienced some difficulty in inducing Sir Anthony to treat the Dutch burgher as on an equality with himself. Lord Willoughby de Eresby, the Peregrine to whom I stood godfather in St. Willibrod's church at Wesel, is now a middle-aged man and my very good friend, the affection which his mother felt for me having descended to him in full measure. She was indeed such a woman as Her Majesty; large-hearted and free-tongued, of masculine courage and a wonderful tenderness. And of her husband what can I say save that he was a brave Christian--and in peaceful times--a studious gentleman. But it is not only in vacant seats and gray hairs that I trace the progress of forty years. They have done for England almost all that men hoped they might do in the first dawn of the reign. We have seen great foes defeated, and strong friends gained. We have seen the coinage amended, trade doubled, the Exchequer filled, the roads made good, the poor provided for in a Christian manner, the Church grown strong; all this in these years. We have seen Holland rise and Spain decline, and well may say in the words of the old text, which my grandfather set up over the hall door at Coton, "_Frustra, nisi Dominus_." THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Francis Cludde, by Stanley J. Weyman