Within these walls tradition brings Sir Walter and Sir Humphrey together. We may reasonably see them here discussing their far-reaching projects, while still the world smiled and both basked in the sunshine of Royal favour. Yet, at the end of their triumphs, from our standpoint in time, we can mark, stealing along the avenue of years, the shadow, hideous in one case and violent in both, destined presently to put a period to each great life.
When the little _Squirrel_, a vessel of but ten tons burthen, was bearing Sir Humphrey upon his last voyage from Newfoundland, before his vision there took shape the spectre of a mighty lion gliding over the sea, "yawning and gaping wide as he went." Upon which portent there rose the storm whereby he perished. Yet the knight's memory is green, and his golden anchor, with pearl at peak, badge of a Sovereign's grace, is not forgot; nor his crest of a squirrel, whose living prototype still haunts the fir trees beside the castle; nor his motto, worthy of so righteous a genius and steadfast a man: "_Malem mori, quam mutare_."
The navigator passed to his restless resting-place in 1584; his half-brother, still busy with the colonisation of Virginia, did not kneel at Westminster and brush his grey hair from the path of the axe until Fate had juggled with him for further four-and-thirty years. Then his sword and pen were laid down; his wise head fell low; and the portion of the great: well-doing, ill report, was won.
At gloaming time, when the jackdaws make an end; when the owl glides out from his tower to the trees and the beetles boom, twilight shadows begin to move and the old grey house broods, like a sentient thing, upon the past; but no unhappy spirits haunt its desolation, and the mighty dead, despite their taking off, revisit these glimpses of the moon to clasp pale hands no more. Abundant life flows to the gate and circles the walls. Arable land ascends the hills, and the clank of plough and cry of man to his horses will soon be heard in the stubble of the corn. The orchards flash ruddy and gold; to-morrow they will be naked and grey; and then again they will foam with flowers and roll in a white sea to the castle walls. Time rings his rounds and forgets not this sequestered hollow. Today, beside the entrance-gate of Compton, the husbandman mounts his nag from that same "upping-stock" whence a Gilbert and a Ralegh leapt to horse in England's age of gold.