I am now wealthy and rich. Years of prosperity have rolled over me, – years of tranquil happiness and sincere enjoyment. There is not a day on which I have not to thank Heaven for blessings of health and vigor, for the love of kind hearts, and for the affection of many benevolent natures. I know and I acknowledge that these are more than the recompense of any sorrows I have suffered; and in my daily walk of life I try to aid those who suffer, to console affliction, and to cheer weak-heartedness. The happiness that others seek and find within the circle of their own, I look for in the wider family of mankind, and I am not disappointed.
Polly and Raper live with me. MacNaghten, too, inhabits the old room that once was his. Poor fellow, in his extreme old age he loves every spot that revives a memory of the past, and in his wanderings often calls me “Walter.”
It remains for me but to say that the singular events which ultimately restored me to my own, attracted the attention of royalty. The various details which came out upon the trial, with the evidence given by the Countess of Gabriac and Raper, – all of which, involving so much already known, I have spared the reader, – so far interested the King that he expressed a desire to see me at Court.
I hastened, of course, to obey the command, and from the royal hand received the honor of knighthood, his Majesty saying, “We should have made you a baronet, only that it would have been of no use to you, seeing that you are the last of the Carews of Castle Carew.”
Yes, kind reader, and these, too, are our last words to you. Would that anything in these memorials of a life may have served to lighten a weary hour, or softened a moment of suffering; since to the higher purposes of instruction or improvement they lay no claim. At all events, think of me as one too deeply conscious of his own faults to hide or to extenuate them, and too sincerely sensible of his good fortune not to strive to extend its blessings to others. – Adieu!
THE END.