"
At the eating-house to which I carried him he held out his scarred
palms to me across the table.
"They have worked my way for me from the Alps," said he. "I left my
crown there, and"--he laughed wearily--"I come back to find another
monarch in the act of laying aside a greater one. My God!
The vanity of it!"
He drank off a glass of wine. "Find me a bed, Uncle Gervase," said
he. "I feel that I can sleep the clock round."
We rode out of London next day. He started in a fret to be home, but
this impatience declined by the way, and by the time we crossed Tamar
had sunk to a lethargy. Sore was I to mark the dull gaze he lifted
(by habit) at the corner of the road where Constantine comes into
view; and sorer the morning after, when, having put gun into his hand
and packed him off with Diana, the old setter, at his heel, I met him
an hour later returning dejectedly to the house. For the next three
or four months he went listless as a man dragging a wounded limb.
But since spring brought back rod and angle, I think and pray that
the voice of running water (best medicine in Nature) begins to cure
him.
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