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CHAPTER XXIV
AND AGAIN THE ROSE OF DEVON
The story of Philip Marsham and of Sir John Bristol, and of the fortune left by the good Doctor Marsham of Little Grimsby, — how it came to his grandson and was lost in the war that brought ruin to many a noble family, — is a tale that may some day be worth the telling. Of that, I make no promises.
The years that followed were wild and turbulent, but during their passage Phil chanced upon one reminder and another of his earlier days of adventuring. He saw once again the long, ranting madman who had carried the great book. He might not have known the fellow, who was in a company of Brownists or Anabaptists, or some such people, had he not heard him crying out in his voice like a cracked trumpet, to the great wonder and admiration of his fellows, ‘‘Never was a man beset with such diversity of thoughts.” There was Jacob, too, who had sneaked away like a rat on the eve of the day when Tom Jordan’s schemes fell about his ears: Phil once came upon him face to face, but when their eyes met Jacob slipped round a corner and was gone. He was a subtle man and wise, and of no intention to be reminded of his days as a pirate.
Philip Marsham went to the war with Sir John Bristol, and fought for the King, and rose to be a captain; and with the story of Philip Marsham is interwoven inseparably the story of Anne Bristol and of her father,