The Last Hope by Henry Seton Merriman (page 4)

twenty years, had always been the guide and mentor and friend–the compulsory pilot he had gaily called himself. He had a vast experience of the world. He had always moved in the best French society. All that he knew, all the influence he could command, and the experience upon which he could draw were unreservedly at Barebone’s service. The difference in years had only affected their friendship in so far as it defined their respective positions and prohibited any thought of rivalry. Colville had been the unquestioned leader, Barebone the ready disciple.

And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions were reversed. Colville stood watching Barebone’s face with eyes rendered almost servile by a great suspense. He waited breathless for the next words.

“This portrait,” said Barebone, “of the Queen was placed in the locket by you?”

Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious cleverness rewarded by complete success. There was nothing in his companion’s voice to suggest suppressed anger. It was all right after all. “I had great difficulty in finding just what I wanted,” he added, modestly.

“What I remember–though the memory is necessarily vague–was a portrait of a woman older than this. Her style of dress was more elaborate. Her hair was dressed differently, with sort of curls at the side, and on the top, half buried in the hair, was the imitation of a nest–a dove’s nest. Such a thing would naturally stick in a child’s memory. It stuck in mine.”

“Yes–and nearly gave the game away to-night,” said Colville, gulping down the memory of those tense moments.

“That portrait–the original–you have not destroyed it?”

“Oh no. It is of some value,” replied Colville, almost naively. He felt in his pocket and produced a silver cigar-case. The miniature was wrapped in a piece of thin paper, which he unfolded. Barebone took the painting and examined it with a little nod of recognition. His memory had not failed after twenty years.

“Who is this lady?” he asked.

Dormer Colville hesitated.

“Do you know the history of that period?” he inquired, after a moment’s reflection. For the last hour he had been trying to decide on a course of conduct. During the last few minutes he had been forced to change it half a dozen times.

“Septimus Marvin, of Farlingford, is one of the greatest living authorities on those reigns. I learnt a good deal from him,” was the answer.

“That lady is, I think, the Duchesse de Guiche.”

“You think–“

“Even Marvin could not tell you for certain,” replied Colville, mildly. He did not seem to perceive a difference in Barebone’s manner toward himself. The quickest intelligence cannot follow another’s mind beyond its own depth.

“Then the inference is that my father was the illegitimate son of the Comte d’Artois.”

“Afterward Charles X, of France,” supplemented Colville, significantly.

“Is that the inference?” persisted Barebone. “I should like to know your opinion. You must have studied the question very carefully. Your opinion should be of some interest, though–“

“Though–” echoed Colville, interrogatively, and regretted it immediately.

“Though it is impossible to say when you speak the truth and when you lie.”

And any who doubted that there was royal blood in Leo Barebone’s veins would assuredly have been satisfied by a glance at his face at that moment; by the sound of his quiet, judicial voice; by the sudden and almost terrifying sense of power in his measuring eyes.

Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and gave his attention to the logs on the hearth. Then suddenly he regained his readiness of speech.

“Look here, Barebone,” he cried. “We must not quarrel; we cannot afford to do that. And after all, what does it matter? You are only giving yourself the benefit of the doubt–that is all. For there is a doubt. You may be what you–what we say you are, after all. It is certain enough that Marie Antoinette and Fersen were in daily correspondence. They were both clever–two of the cleverest people in France–and they were both desperate. Remember that. Do you think that they would have failed in a matter of such intense interest to her, and therefore to him? All these pretenders, Naundorff and the others, have proved that quite clearly, but none has succeeded in proving that he was the man.”

“And do you think that I shall be able to prove that I am the man–when I am not?”

By way of reply Dormer Colville turned again to the fireplace and took down the print of Louis XVI engraved from a portrait painted when he was still Dauphin. A mirror stood near, and Colville came to the table carrying the portrait in one hand, the looking-glass in the other.

“Here,” he said, eagerly, “Look at one and then at the other. Look in the mirror and then at the portrait. Prove it! Why, God has proved it for you.”

“I do not think we had better bring Him into the question,” was the retort: an odd reflex of Captain Clubbe’s solid East Anglian piety. “No. If we go on with the thing at all, let us be honest enough to admit to ourselves that we are dishonest. The portrait in that locket points clearly enough to the Truth.”

“The portrait in that locket is of Marie Antoinette,” replied Colville, half sullenly. “And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one except myself knows of–of this doubt which you have stumbled upon. De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe–all of them are convinced that your father was the Dauphin.”

“And Miss Liston?”

“Miriam Liston–she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long before I told her.”

Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes. Colville wondered a second time why Loo Barebone reminded him of Captain Clubbe to-night.

“What makes you believe that?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. But that isn’t the question. The question is about the future. You see how things are in France. It is a question of Louis Napoleon or a monarchy–you see that. Unless you stop him he will be Emperor before a year is out, and he will drag France in the gutter. He is less a Bonaparte than you are a Bourbon. You remember that Louis Bonaparte himself was the first to say so. He wrote a letter to the Pope, saying so quite clearly. You will go on with it, of course, Barebone. Say you will go on with it! To turn back now would be death. We could not do it if we wanted to. _I_ have been trying to think about it, and I cannot. That is the truth. It takes one’s breath away. At the mere thought of it I feel as if I were getting out of my depth.”

“We have been out of our depths the last month,” admitted Barebone, curtly.

And he stood reflecting, while Colville watched him.

“If I go on,” he said, at length, “I go on alone.”

“Better not,” urged Colville, with a laugh of great relief. “For you would always have me and my knowledge hanging over you. If you succeeded, you would have me dunning you for hush-money.”

Which seemed true enough. Few men knew more of one side of human nature than Dormer Colville, it would appear.

“I am not afraid of that.”

“You can never tell,” laughed Colville, but his laugh rather paled under Barebone’s glance. “You can never tell.”

“Wise men do not attempt to blackmail–kings.”

And Colville caught his breath.

“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, after a pause. “You seem to be taking to the position very kindly, Barebone. But I do not mind, you know. It does not matter what we say to each other, eh? We have been good friends so long. You must do as you like. And if you succeed, I must be content to leave my share of the matter to your consideration. You certainly seem to know the business already, and some day perhaps you will remember who taught you to be a King.”

“It was an old North Sea skipper who taught me that,” replied Barebone. “That is one of the things I learnt at sea.”

“Yes–yes,” agreed Colville, almost nervously. “And you will go on with the thing, will you not? Like a good fellow, eh? Think about it till to-morrow morning. I will go now. Which is my candle? Yes. You will think about it. Do not jump to any hasty decision.”

He hurried to the door as he spoke. He could not understand Barebone at all.

“If I do go on with it,” was the reply, “it will not be in response to any of your arguments. It will be only and solely for the sake of France.”

“Yes–of course,” agreed Colville, and closed the door behind him.

In his own room he turned and looked toward the door leading through to that from which he had hurriedly escaped. He passed his hand across his face, which was white and moist.

“For the sake of France!” he echoed in bewilderment. “For the sake of France! Gad! I believe he _is_ the man after all.”

CHAPTER XXIII

A SIMPLE BANKER

Mr. John Turner had none of the outward signs of the discreet adviser in his person or surroundings. He had, it was currently whispered, inherited from his father an enormous clientele of noble names. And to such as have studied the history of Paris during the whole of the nineteenth century, it will appear readily comprehensible that the careful or the penniless should give preference to an English banker.

Mr. Turner’s appearance suggested solidity, and the carpet of his private room was a good one. The room smelt of cigar smoke, while the office, through which the client must pass to reach it, was odoriferous of ancient ledgers.

Half a dozen clerks were seated in the office, which was simply furnished and innocent of iron safes. If a client entered, one of the six, whose business it was, looked up, while the other five continued to give their attention to the books before them.

One cold morning, toward the end of the year, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was admitted by the concierge. She noted that only one clerk gave heed to her entry, and, it is to be presumed, the quiet perfection of her furs.

“Of the six young men in your office,” she observed, when she was seated in the bare wooden chair placed invitingly by the side of John Turner’s writing-table, “only one appears to be in full possession of his senses.”

Turner, sitting–if the expression be allowed–in a heap in an armchair before a table provided with pens, ink, and a blotting-pad, but otherwise bare, looked at his client with a bovine smile.

“I don’t pay them to admire my clients,” he replied.

“If Mademoiselle de Montijo came in, I suppose the other five would not look up.”

John Turner settled himself a little lower into his chair, so that he appeared to be in some danger of slipping under the table.

“If the Archangel Gabriel came in, they would still attend to their business,” he replied, in his thick, slow voice. “But he won’t. He is not one of my clients. Quite the contrary.”

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence smoothed the fur that bordered her neat jacket and glanced sideways at her banker. Then she looked round the room. It was bare enough. A single picture hung on the wall–a portrait of an old lady. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence raised her eyebrows, and continued her scrutiny. Here, again, was no iron safe. There were no ledgers, no diaries, no note-books, no paraphernalia of business. Nothing but a bare table and John Turner seated at it, in a much more comfortable chair than that provided for the client, staring apathetically at a date-case which stood on a bare mantelpiece.

The lady’s eyes returned to the portrait on the wall.

“You used to have a portrait of Louis Philippe there,” she said.

“When Louis Philippe was on the throne,” admitted the banker.

“And now?” inquired this daughter of Eve, looking at the portrait.

“My maternal aunt,” replied Turner, making a gesture with two fingers, as if introducing his client to the portrait.

“You keep her, one may suppose, as a stop-gap–between the dynasties. It is so safe–a maternal aunt!”

“One cannot hang a republic on the wall, however much one may want to.”

“Then you are a Royalist?” inquired Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

“No; I am only a banker,” replied Turner, with his chin sinking lower on his bulging waistcoat and his eyes scarcely visible beneath the heavy lids.

The remark, coupled with a thought that Turner was going to sleep, seemed to remind the client of her business.

“Will you kindly ask one of your clerks to let me know how much money I have?” she said, casting a glance not wholly innocent of scornful reproach at the table, so glaringly devoid of the bare necessities of a banking business.

“Only eleven thousand francs and fourteen sous,” replied Turner, with a promptness which seemed to suggest that he kept no diary or note-book on the table before him because he had need of neither.

“I feel sure I must have more than that,” said Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with some spirit. “I quite thought I had.”

But John Turner only moistened his lips and sat patiently gazing at the date. His attitude dimly suggested–quite in a nice way–that the chair upon which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sat was polished bright by the garments of persons who had found themselves labouring under the same error.

“Well, I must have a hundred thousand francs to-morrow; that is all. Simply must. And in notes, too. I told you I should want it when you came to see me at Royan. You must remember. I told you at luncheon.”

“When we were eating a sweetbread _aux champignons._ I remember perfectly. We do not get sweetbreads like that in Paris.”

And John Turner shook his head sadly. “Well, will you let me have the money to-morrow morning–in notes?”

“I remember I advised you not to sell just now; after we had finished the sweetbread and had gone on to a _creme renversee_–very good one, too. Yes, it is a bad time to sell. Things are uncertain in France just now. One cannot even get one’s meals properly served. Cook’s head is full of politics, I suppose.”

“To-morrow morning–in notes,” repeated Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

“Now, your man at Royan was excellent–kept his head all through–and a light hand, too. Got him with you in Paris?”

“No, I have not. To-morrow morning, about ten o’clock–in notes.”

And Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence tapped a neat gloved finger on the corner of the table with some determination.

“I remember–at dessert–you told me you wanted to realise a considerable sum of money at the beginning of the year, to put into some business venture. Is this part of that sum?”

“Yes,” returned the lady, arranging her veil.

“A venture of Dormer Colville’s, I think you told me–while we were having coffee. One never gets coffee hot enough in a private house, but yours was all right.”

“Yes,” mumbled Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, behind her quick finger, busy with the veil.

Beneath the sleepy lids John Turner’s eyes, which were small and deep-sunken in the flesh, like the eyes of a pig, noted in passing that his client’s cheeks were momentarily pink.

“I hope you don’t mean to suggest that there is anything unsafe in Mr. Colville as a business man?”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Turner. “On the contrary, he is most enterprising. And I know no one who smokes a better cigar than Colville–when he can get it. And the young fellow seemed nice enough.”

“Which young fellow?” inquired the lady, sharply.

“His young friend–the man who was with him. I think you told me, after luncheon, that Colville required the money to start his young friend in business.”

“Never!” laughed Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who, if she felt momentarily uneasy, was quickly reassured. For this was one of those fortunate ladies who go through life with the comforting sense of being always cleverer than their neighbour. If the neighbour happen to be a man, and a stout one, the conviction is the stronger for those facts. “Never! I never told you that. You must have dreamt it.”

“Perhaps I did,” admitted the banker, placidly. “I am afraid I often feel sleepy after luncheon. Perhaps I dreamt it. But I could not hand such a sum in notes to an unprotected lady, even if I can effect a sale of your securities so quickly as to have the money ready by to-morrow morning. Perhaps Colville will call for it himself.”

“If he is in Paris.”

“Every one is in Paris now,” was Mr. Turner’s opinion. “And if he likes to bring his young friend with him, all the better. In these uncertain times it is not fair on a man to hand to him a large sum of money in notes.” He paused and jerked his thumb toward the window, which was a double one, looking down into the Rue Lafayette. “There are always people in the streets watching those who pass in and out of a bank. If a man comes out smiling, with his hand on his pocket, he is followed, and if an opportunity occurs, he is robbed. Better not have it in notes.”

“I know,” replied Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, not troubling further to deceive one so lethargic and simple. “I know that Dormer wants it in notes.”

“Then let him come and fetch it.”

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence rose from her chair and shook her dress into straighter folds, with the air of having accomplished a task which she had known to be difficult, but not impossible to one equipped with wit and self-confidence.

“You will sell the securities, and have it all ready by ten o’clock to-morrow morning,” she repeated, with a feminine insistence.

“You shall have the money to-morrow morning, whether I succeed in selling for cash or not,” was the reply, and John Turner concealed a yawn with imperfect success.

“A loan?”

“No banker lends–except to kings,” replied Turner, stolidly. “Call it an accommodation.”

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced at him sharply over the fur collar which she was clasping round her neck. Here was a banker, reputed wealthy, who sat in a bare room, without so much as a fireproof safe to suggest riches; a business man of world-wide affairs, who drummed indolent fingers on a bare table; a philosopher with a maxim ever ready to teach, as all maxims do, cowardice in the guise of prudence, selfishness masquerading as worldly wisdom, hard-heartedness passing for foresight. Here was one who seemed to see, and was yet too sleepy to perceive. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was not always sure of her banker, but now, as ever before, one glance at his round, heavy face reassured her. She laughed and went away, well satisfied with the knowledge, only given to women, of having once more carried out her object with the completeness which is known as twisting round the little finger.

She nodded to Turner, who had ponderously risen from the chair which was more comfortable than the client’s seat, and held the door open for her to pass. He glanced at the clock as he did so. And she knew that he was thinking that it was nearly the luncheon hour, so transparent to the feminine perception are the thoughts of men.

When he had closed the door he returned to his writing-table. Like many stout people, he moved noiselessly, and quickly enough when the occasion demanded haste.

He wrote three letters in a very few minutes, and, when they were addressed, he tapped on the table with the end of his pen-holder, which brought, in the twinkling of an eye, that clerk whose business it was to abandon his books when called.

“I shall not go out to luncheon until I have the written receipt for each one of those letters,” said the banker, knowing that until he went out to luncheon his six clerks must needs go hungry. “Not an answer,” he explained, “but a receipt in the addressee’s writing.”

And while the clerk hurried from the room and down the stone stairs at a break-neck speed, Turner sank back into his chair, with lustreless eyes fixed on space.

“No one can wait,” he was in the habit of saying, “better than I can.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS

If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired carriage, of which the blinds were partially lowered.

The driver had been instructed to drive into the roomy court-yard of the house of which Turner’s office occupied the first floor. Carriages frequently waited there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed all day and all night into a circular basin.

Colville descended from the carriage and turned to speak to Loo, who was left sitting within it. Since the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac, when they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain restraint had characterised their intercourse. Colville was shy of approaching the subject upon which they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed away the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such a manner that complicity was practically forced upon an innocent man.

Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited a week, during which time Colville had not dared to ask him whether his mind was made up. There was a sort of recklessness in Loo’s manner which at once puzzled and alarmed his mentor. At times he was gay, as he always had been, and in the midst of his gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go to his own room.

To press the question would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some crisis or another in life.

“I will not be long,” he assured Barebone, with a gay laugh. The prospect of handling one hundred thousand francs in notes was perhaps exhilarating; though the actual possession of great wealth would seem to be of the contrary tendency. There is a profound melancholy peculiar to the face of the millionaire. “I shall not be long; for he is a man of his word, and the money will be ready.”

John Turner was awaiting his visitor, and gave a large soft hand inertly into Colville’s warm grasp.

“I always wish I saw more of you,” said the new-comer.

“Is there not enough of me already?” inquired the banker, pointing to the vacant chair, upon which fell the full light of the double window. A smaller window opposite to it afforded a view of the court-yard. And it was at this smaller window that Colville glanced as he sat down, with a pause indicative of reluctance.

Turner saw the glance and noted the reluctance. He concluded, perhaps, in the slow, sure mind that worked behind his little peeping eyes, that Loo Barebone was in the carriage in the court-yard, and that Colville was anxious to return to him as soon as possible.

“It is very kind of you to say that, I am sure,” pursued Turner, rousing himself to be pleasant and conversational. “But, although the loss is mine, my dear Colville, the fault is mostly yours. You always know where to find me when you want my society. I am anchored in this chair, whereas one never knows where one has a butterfly like yourself.”

“A butterfly that is getting a bit heavy on the wing,” answered Colville, with his wan and sympathetic smile. He sat forward in the chair in an attitude antipathetic to digression from the subject in hand.

“I do not see any evidence of that. One hears of you here and there in France. I suppose, for instance, you know more than any man in Paris at the present moment of the–” he paused and suppressed a yawn, “the–er–vintage. Anything in it–eh?”

“So far as I could judge, the rains came too late; but I shall be glad to tell you all about it another time. This morning–“

“Yes; I know. You want your money. I have it all ready for you. But I must make out some sort of receipt, you know.”

Turner felt vaguely in his pocket, and at last found a letter, from which he tore the blank sheet, while his companion, glancing from time to time at the window, watched him impatiently.

“Seems to me,” said Turner, opening his inkstand, “that the vintage of 1850 will not be drunk by a Republic.”

“Ah! indeed.”

“What do you think?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, my mind was more occupied in the quality of the vintage than in its ultimate fate. If you make out a receipt on behalf of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, I will sign it,” answered Colville, fingering the blotting-paper.

“Received on behalf of, and for, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, the sum of one hundred thousand francs,” muttered the banker, as he wrote.

“She is only a client, you understand, my dear Colville,” he went on, holding out his hand for the blotting-paper, “or I would not part with the money so easily. It is against my advice that Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence realises this sum.”

“If a woman sets her heart on a thing, my dear fellow–” began Colville, carelessly.

“Yes, I know–reason goes to the wall. Sign there, will you?”

Turner handed him pen and receipt, but Colville was looking toward the window sunk deep in the wall on the inner side of the room. This was not a double window, and the sound of carriage wheels rose above the gentle, continuous plash of the little fountain in the court-yard.

Colville rose from his seat, but to reach the window he had to pass behind Turner’s chair. Turner rose at the same moment, and pushed his chair back against the wall in doing so. This passage toward the window being completely closed by the bulk of John Turner, Colville hurried round the writing-table. But Turner was again in front of him, and, without appearing to notice that his companion was literally at his heels, he opened a large cupboard sunk in the panelling of the wall. The door of it folded back over the little window, completely hiding it.

Turning on his heel, with an agility which was quite startling in one so stout, he found Colville’s colourless face two feet from his own. In fact, Colville almost stumbled against him. For a moment they looked each other in the eyes in silence. With his right hand, John Turner held the cupboard-door over the window.

“I have the money here,” he said, “in this cupboard.” And as he spoke, a hollow rumble, echoing in the court-yard, marked the exit of a carriage under the archway into the Rue Lafayette. There had been only one carriage in attendance in the court-yard–that in which Colville had left Barebone.

“Here, in this cupboard,” repeated Turner to unheeding ears. For Dormer Colville was already hurrying across the room toward the other window that looked out into the Rue Lafayette. The house was a lofty one, with a high entresol, and from the windows of the first floor it was not possible to see the street immediately below without opening the sashes.

Turner closed the cupboard and locked it, without ceasing to watch Colville, who was struggling with the stiff fastening of the outer sash.

“Anything the matter?” inquired the banker, placidly. “Lost a dog?”

But Colville had at length wrenched open the window and was leaning out. The roar of the traffic drowned any answer he may have made. It was manifest that the loss of three precious minutes had made him too late. After a glance down into the street, he came back into the centre of the room and snatched up his hat from Turner’s bare writing-table.

He hurried to the door, but turned again, with his back against it, to face his companion, with the eyes usually so affable and sympathetic, ablaze for once with rage.

“Damn you!” he cried. “Damn you!”

And the door banged on his heels as he hurried through the outer office.

Turner was left standing, a massive incarnation of bewilderment, in the middle of the room. He heard the outer door close with considerable emphasis. Then he sat down again, his eyebrows raised high on his round forehead, and gazed sadly at the date-card.

* * * * *

Colville had left Leo Barebone seated in the hired carriage in a frame of mind far from satisfactory. A seafaring life, more than any other, teaches a man quickness in action. A hundred times a day the sailor needs to execute, with a rapidity impossible to the landsman, that which knowledge tells him to be the imminent necessity of the moment. At sea, life is so far simpler than in towns that there are only two ways: the right and the wrong. In the devious paths of a pavement-ridden man there are a hundred byways: there is the long, long lane of many turnings called Compromise.

Loo Barebone had turned into this lane one night at the Hotel Gemosac, in the Ruelle St. Jacob, and had wandered there ever since. Captain Clubbe had taught him the two ways of seamanship effectively enough. But the education fell short of the necessities of this crisis. Moreover, Barebone had in his veins blood of a race which had fallen to low estate through Compromise and Delay.

Let those throw the first stone at him who have seen the right way gaping before their feet with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently insurmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. For the devious path of Compromise has this merit–that the obstacles are round the corner.

Barebone, absorbed in thought, hardly noticed that the driver of his carriage descended from the box and lounged toward the archway, where the hum of traffic and the passage of many people would serve to beguile a long wait. After a minute’s delay, a driver returned and climbed to the seat–but it was not the same driver. He wore the same coat and hat, but a different face looked out from the sheep-skin collar turned up to the ears. There was no one in the court-yard to notice this trifling change. Barebone was not even looking out of the window. He had never glanced at the cabman’s face, whose vehicle had happened to be lingering at the corner of the Ruelle St. Jacob when Colville and his companion had emerged from the high doorway of the Hotel Gemosac.

Barebone was so far obeying instructions that he was leaning back in the carriage, his face half hidden by the collar of his coat. For it was a cold morning in mid-winter. He hardly looked up when the handle of the door was turned. Colville had shut this door five minutes earlier, promising to return immediately. It was undoubtedly his hand that opened the door. But suddenly Barebone sat up. Both doors were open.

Before he could make another movement, two men stepped quietly into the carriage, each closing the door by which he had entered quickly and noiselessly. One seated himself beside Barebone, the other opposite to him, and each drew down a blind. They seemed to have rehearsed the actions over and over again, so that there was no hitch or noise or bungling. The whole was executed as if by clock-work, and the carriage moved away the instant the doors were closed.

In the twilight, within the carriage, the two men grasped Loo Barebone, each by one arm, and held him firmly against the back of the carriage.

“Quietly, _mon bon monsieur_; quietly, and you will come to no harm.”

Barebone made no resistance, and only laughed.

“You have come too soon,” he said, without attempting to free his arms, which were held, as if by a vice, at the elbow and shoulder. “You have come too soon, gentlemen! There is no money in the carriage. Not so much as a sou.”

“It is not for money that we have come,” replied the man who had first spoken–and the absolute silence of his companion was obviously the silence of a subordinate.

“Though, for a larger sum than monsieur is likely to offer, one might make a mistake, and allow of escape–who knows?”

The remark was made with the cynical honesty of dishonesty which had so lately been introduced into France by him who was now Dictator of that facile people.

“Oh! I offer nothing,” replied Barebone. “For a good reason. I have nothing to offer. If you are not thieves, what are you?”

The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, over the cobble-stones, and the inmates, though their faces were close together, had to shout in order to be heard.

“Of the police,” was the reply. “Of the high police. I fancy that monsieur’s affair is political?”

“Why should you fancy that?”

“Because my comrade and I are not engaged on other cases. The criminal receives very different treatment. Permit me to assure you of that. And no consideration whatever. The common police is so unmannerly. There!–one may well release the arms–since we understand each other.”

“I shall not try to escape–if that is what you mean,” replied Barebone, with a laugh.

“Nothing else–nothing else,” his affable captor assured him.

And for the remainder of a long drive through the noisy streets the three men sat upright in the dim and musty cab in silence.

CHAPTER XXV

SANS RANCUNE

A large French fishing-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against the spars. It had been a fine morning, and the Captain, a man from Fecamp, where every boy that is born is born a sailor, had been fortunate in working his way in clear weather across the banks that lie northward of the Thames.

He had predicted all along in a voice rendered husky by much shouting in dirty weather that the fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special privilege of the pessimistic. These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky. They roll across the North Sea from their home in the marshes of Holland on the face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way with dripping eyelashes and a rosy face through them, can look up and see the blue sky through the rifts overhead. When the fog-bank touches land it rises, slowly lifted by the warm breath of the field. On the coast-line it lies low; a mile inland it begins to break into rifts, so that any one working his way down one of the tidal rivers, sails in the counting of twenty seconds from sunshine into a pearly shadow. Five miles inland there is a transparent veil across the blue sky slowly sweeping toward the west, and rising all the while, until those who dwell on the higher lands of Essex and Suffolk perceive nothing but a few fleecy clouds high in the heavens.

The lugger was hardly moving, for the tide had only turned half an hour ago.

“Provided,” the Captain had muttered within the folds of his woollen scarf rolled round and round his neck until it looked like a dusky life-belt–“provided that they are ringing their bell on the Shipwash, we shall find our way into the open. Always sea-sick, this traveller, always sea-sick!”

And he turned with a kindly laugh to Loo Barebone, who was lying on a heap of old sails by the stern rail, concealing as well as he could the pangs of a consuming hunger.

“One sees that you will never be a sailor,” added the man from Fecamp, with that rough humour which sailors use.

“Perhaps I do not want to be one,” replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the voyage had lasted but four days.

“Listen,” interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. “Listen! I hear a bell, or else it is my conscience.”

Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River. But he did not deem it necessary for one who was a prisoner on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation of a vessel now making its way to the Faroee fisheries for the twentieth time.

“My conscience,” he observed, “rings louder than that.”

The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a rope made fast to the rail for the purpose, and went to the side of the ship, lifting his nose toward the west.

“It is the land,” he said. “I can smell it. But it is only the Blessed Virgin who knows where we are.”

He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half hidden in the mist in the waist of the boat to try a heave of the lead.

The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now–the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway–with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint “tap-tap” was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker’s hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side. They were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.

The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the help of line or lead. For he had served a long apprenticeship on these coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.

He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced over his shoulder toward the ship’s dinghy towing astern. The rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him. The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.

The face of the water was glassy and of a yellow green. Although the scud swept in toward the land at a fair speed, there was not enough wind to fill the sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed inexhaustible. There was more to come. This fog-bank lay on the water halfway across the North Sea, and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it, was now sinking to the west, cold and pale.

“The water seems shallow,” said Barebone to the Captain. “What would you do if the ship went aground?”

“We should stay there, _mon bon monsieur_, until some one came to help us at the flood tide. We should shout until they heard us.”

“You might fire a gun,” suggested Barebone.

“We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur,” replied the Captain, who had long ago explained to his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling.

“It is the fortune of war,” he had explained before the white cliffs of St. Valerie had faded from sight. “I am a poor man who cannot afford to refuse a good offer. It is a Government job, as you no doubt know without my telling you. You would seem to have incurred the displeasure or the distrust of some one high placed in the Government. ‘Treat him well,’ they said to me. ‘Give him your best, and see that he comes to no harm unless he tries to escape. And be careful that he does not return to France before the mackerel fishing begins.’ And when we do return to Fecamp, I have to lie to off Notre Dame de la Garde and signal to the Douane that I have you safe. They want you out of the way. You are a dangerous man, it seems. _Salut_!”

And the Captain raised his glass to one so distinguished by Government. He laughed as he set his glass down on the little cabin table.

“No ill-feeling on either side,” he added. “_C’est entendu_.”

He made a half-movement as if to shake hands across the table and thought better of it, remembering, perhaps, that his own palm was not innocent of blood-money. For the rest they had been friendly enough on the voyage. And had the “Petite Jeanne” been in danger, it is probable that Barebone would have warned his jailer, if only in obedience to a seaman’s instinct against throwing away a good ship.

He had noted every detail, however, of the dinghy while he lay on the deck of the “Petite Jeanne”; how the runner fitted to the mast; whether the halliards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves or were knotted and would jamb. He knew the weight of the gaff and the great tan-soddened sail to a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought, on the Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. He had never looked for thick weather at this time of year off the Banks, so near home, within a few hours’ sail of the mouth of Farlingford River.

If a breeze would only come up from the south-east, as it almost always does in these waters toward the evening of a still, fine day! Without lifting his head he scanned the weather, noting that the scud was blowing more northward now. It might only be what is known as a slant. On the other hand, it might prove to be a true breeze, coming from the usual quarter. The “tap-tap” of the caulker’s hammer on the slip-way in Harwich River was silent now. There must be a breeze in-shore that carried the sound away.

The topsail of the “Petite Jeanne” filled with a jerk, and the Captain, standing at the tiller, looked up at it. The lower sails soon took their cue, and suddenly the slack sheets hummed taut in the breeze. The “Petite Jeanne” answered to it at once, and the waves gurgled and laughed beneath her counter as she moved through the water. She could sail quicker than her dinghy: Barebone knew that. But he also knew that he could handle an open boat as few even on the Cotes-du-Nord knew how.

If the breeze came strong, it would blow the fog-bank away, and Barebone had need of its covert. Though there must be many English boats within sight should the fog lift–indeed, the guardship in Harwich harbour would be almost visible across the spit of land where Landguard Fort lies hidden–Barebone had no intention of asking help so compromising. He had but a queer story to tell to any in authority, and on the face of it he must perforce appear to have run away with the dinghy of the “Petite Jeanne.”

He desired to get ashore as unobtrusively as possible. For he was not going to stay in England. The die was cast now. Where Dormer Colville’s persuasions had failed, where the memory of that journey through Royalist France had yet left him doubting, the incidents of the last few days had clinched the matter once for all. Barebone was going back to France.

He moved as if to stretch his limbs and lay down once more, with his shoulders against the rail and his elbow covering the stanchion round which the dinghy’s painter was made fast.

The proper place for the dinghy was on deck should the breeze freshen. Barebone knew that as well as the French Captain of the “Petite Jeanne.” For seamanship is like music–it is independent of language or race. There is only one right way and one wrong way at sea, all the world over. The dinghy was only towing behind while the fog continued to be impenetrable. At any moment the Captain might give the order to bring it inboard.

At any moment Barebone might have to make a dash for the boat.

He watched the Captain, who continued to steer in silence. To drift on the tide in a fog is a very different thing to sailing through it at ten miles an hour on a strong breeze, and the steersman had no thought to spare for anything but his sails. Two men were keeping the look-out in the bows. Another–the leadsman–was standing amidships peering over the side into the mist.

Still Barebone waited. Captain Clubbe had taught him that most difficult art–to select with patience and a perfect judgment the right moment. The “Petite Jeanne” was rustling through the glassy water northward toward Farlingford.

At a word from the Captain the man who had been heaving the lead came aft to the ship’s bell and struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated the warning, but no one answered. They were alone in these shallow channels. Fortunately the man faced forward, as sailors always do by instinct, turning his back upon the Captain and Barebone.

The painter was cast off now and, under his elbow, Barebone was slowly hauling in. The dinghy was heavy and the “Petite Jeanne” was moving quickly through the water. Suddenly Barebone rose to his feet, hauled in hand over hand, and when the dinghy was near enough, leaped across two yards of water to her gunwale.

The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the thwart, and looking back over his shoulder saw and understood in a flash of thought. But even then he did not understand that Loo was aught else but a landsman half-recovered from sea-sickness. He understood it a minute later, however, when the brown sail ran up the mast and, holding the tiller between his knees, Barebone hauled in the sheet hand over hand and steered a course out to sea.

He looked back over the foot of the sail and waved his hand. “_Sans rancune!_” he shouted. “_C’est entendu!_” The Captain’s own words.

The “Petite Jeanne” was already round to the wind, and the Captain was bellowing to his crew to trim the sails. It could scarcely be a chase, for the huge deep-sea fishing-boat could sail half as fast again as her own dinghy. The Captain gave his instructions with all the quickness of his race, and the men were not slow to carry them out. The safe-keeping of the prisoner had been made of personal advantage to each member of the crew.

The Captain hailed Barebone with winged words which need not be set down here, and explained to him the impossibility of escape.

“How can you–a landsman,” he shouted, “hope to get away from us? Come back and it shall be as you say ‘_sans rancune._’ Name of God! I bear you no ill-will for making the attempt.”

They were so close together that all on board the “Petite Jeanne” could see Barebone laugh and shake his head. He knew that there was no gun on board the fishing-boat. The lugger rushed on, sailing quicker, lying up closer to the wind. She was within twenty yards of the little boat now–would overhaul her in a minute.

But in an instant Barebone was round on the other tack, and the Captain swore aloud, for he knew now that he was not dealing with a landsman. The “Petite Jeanne” spun round almost as quickly, but not quite. Every time that Barebone put about, the “Petite Jeanne” must perforce do the same, and every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a long tack or running before the wind the bigger boat was immeasurably superior. Barebone had but one chance–to make short tacks–and he knew it. The Captain knew it also, and no landsman would have possessed the knowledge. He was trying to run the boat down now.

Barebone might succeed in getting far enough away to be lost in the fog. But in tacking so frequently he was liable to make a mistake. The bigger boat was not so likely to miss stays. He passed so close to her that he could read the figures cut on her stern-post indicating her draught of water.

There was another chance. The “Petite Jeanne” was drawing six feet; the dinghy could sail across a shoal covered by eighteen inches of water. But such a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the water. Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer than the Goodwins. Barebone pressed out seaward. He knew every channel and every bank between the Thames and Thorpeness. He kept on pressing out to sea by short tacks. All the while he was peeping over the gunwale out of the corner of his eye. He was near, he must be near, a bank covered by five feet of water at low tide. A shoal of five feet is rarely visible on the surface.

Suddenly he rose from his seat on the gunwale, and stood with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, half turning back to look at “Petite Jeanne” towering almost over him. And as he looked, her bluff black bows rose upward with an odd climbing movement like a horse stepping up a bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood still.

Barebone went about again and sailed past her.

“_Sans rancune_!” he shouted. But no one heeded him, for they had other matters to attend to. And the dinghy sailed into the veil of the mist toward the land.

CHAPTER XXVI

RETURNED EMPTY

The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away before sunset.

Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. “Give a boy a good education,” he said, a hundred times. “Make a gentleman of him, and you have done your duty by him.”

“Make a gentleman of him–and the world will be glad to feed and clothe him,” was the real thought in his mind, as it was in the mind of nearly all his contemporaries. The wildest dreamer of those days never anticipated that, in the passage of one brief generation, social advancement should be for the shrewdly ignorant rather than for the scholar; that it would be better for a man that his mind be stored with knowledge of the world than the wisdom of the classics; that the successful grocer might find a kinder welcome in a palace than the scholar; that the manufacturer of kitchen utensils might feed with kings and speak to them, without aspirates, between the courses.

Parson Marvin knew none of these things, however; nor suspected that the advance of civilisation is not always progressive, but that she may take hands with vulgarity and dance down-hill, as she does to-day. His one scheme of life for Sep was that he should be sent to the ancient school where field-sports are cultivated to-day and English gentlemen turned upon the world more ignorant than any other gentlemen in the universe. Then, of course, Sep must go to that College with which his father’s life had been so closely allied. And if it please God to call him to the Church, and the College should remember that it had given his father a living, and do the same by him–for that reason and no other–then, of course, Sep would be a made man.

And the making of Sep had been in progress during the winter day that a fog-bank came in from the North Sea and clung tenaciously to the low, surfless coast. In the afternoon the sun broke through at last, wintry and pale. Sep, who, by some instinct–the instinct, it is to be supposed, of young animals–knew that he was destined to be of a generation that should cultivate ignorance out of doors, rather than learning by the fireside, threw aside his books and cried out that he could no longer breathe in his father’s study.

So Parson Marvin went off, alone, to visit a distant parishioner–one who was dying by himself out on the marsh, in a cottage cut off from all the world in a spring tide.

“Don’t forget that it is high tide at five o’clock, and that there is no moon, and that the dykes will be full. You will never find your way across the marsh after dark,” said Sep–the learned in tides and those practical affairs of nature, which were as a closed book to the scholar.

Parson Marvin vaguely acknowledged the warning and went away, leaving Sep to accompany Miriam on her daily errand to the simple shops in Farlingford, which would awake to life and business now that the sea-fog was gone. For the men of Farlingford, like nearly all seafarers, are timorous of bad weather on shore and sit indoors during its passage, while they treat storm and rain with a calm contempt at sea.

“Sail a-coming up the river, master,” River Andrew said to Sep, who was awaiting Miriam in the village street, and he walked on, without further comment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, where he spent a portion of his day, without apparent effect.

So, when Miriam had done her shopping, it was only natural that they should turn their footsteps toward the quay and the river-wall. Or was it fate? So often is the natural nothing but the inevitable in holiday garb.

“That is no Farlingford boat,” said Sep, versed in riverside knowledge, so soon as he saw the balance-lug moving along the line of the river-wall, half a mile below the village.

They stood watching. Few coasters were at sea in these months of wild weather, and there was nothing moving on the quay. The moss-grown slip-way, where “The Last Hope” had been drawn up for repair, stood gaunt and empty, half submerged by the flowing tide. Many Farlingford men were engaged in the winter fisheries on the Dogger, and farther north, in Lowestoft boats. In winter, Farlingford–thrust out into the North Sea, surrounded by marsh–is forgotten by the world.

The solitary boat came round the corner into the wider sheet of water, locally known as Quay Reach.

“A foreigner!” cried Sep, jumping, as was his wont, from one foot to the other with excitement. “It is like the boat that was brought up by the tide, with a dead man in it, long ago. And that was a Belgian boat.”

Miriam was looking at the boat with a sudden brightness in her eyes, a rush of colour to her cheeks, which were round and healthy and of that soft clear pink which marks a face swept constantly by mist and a salty air. In flat countries, where men may see each other, unimpeded by hedge or tree or hillock, across a space measured only by miles, the eye is soon trained–like the sailor’s eye–to see and recognise at a great distance.

There was no mistaking the attitude of the solitary steersman of this foreign boat stealing quietly up to Farlingford on the flood tide. It was Loo Barebone sitting on the gunwale as he always sat, with one knee raised on the thwart, to support his elbow, and his chin in the palm of his hand, so that he could glance up the head of the sail or ahead, without needing to change his position.

Sep turned and looked up at her.

“I thought you said he was never coming back,” he said, reproachfully.

“So I did. I thought he was never coming back.”

Sep looked at her again, and then at the boat. One never knows how much children, and dogs–who live daily with human beings–understand.

“Your face is very red,” he observed. “That comes from telling untruths.”

“It comes from the cold wind,” replied Miriam, with an odd, breathless laugh.

“If we do not go home, he will be there before us,” said Sep, gravely. “He will make one tack across to the other side, and then make the mouth of the creek.”

They turned and walked, side by side, on the top of the sea-wall toward the rectory. Their figures must have been outlined against the sky, for any watching from the river. The girl, tall and strong, walking with the ease that comes from health and a steadfast mind; the eager, restless boy running and jumping by her side. Barebone must have seen them as soon as they saw him. They were part of Farlingford, these two. He had a sudden feeling of having been away for years, with this difference–that he came back and found nothing changed. Whereas, in reality, he who returns after a long absence usually finds no one awaiting him.

He did as Sep had foretold–crossing to the far side of the river, and then gaining the mouth of the creek in one tack. Miriam and Sep had reached the rectory garden first, and now stood waiting for him. He came on in silence. Last time–on “The Last Hope”–he had come up the river singing.

Sep waved his hand, and, in response, Barebone nodded his head, with one eye peering ahead, for the breeze was fresh.

The old chain was still there, imperfectly fastened round a tottering post at the foot of the tide-washed steps. It clinked as he made fast the boat. Miriam had not heard the sound of it since that night, long ago, when Loo had gone down the steps in the dark and cast off.

“I was given a passage home in a French fishing-boat, and borrowed their dinghy to come ashore in,” said Loo, as he came up the steps. He knew that Farlingford would want some explanation, and that Sep would be proud to give it. An explanation is never the worse for a spice of truth.

“Miriam told me you were never coming home again,” answered Sep, still nourishing that grievance.

“Well, she was wrong, and here I am!” was Loo’s reply, with his old, ready laugh. “And here is Farlingford–unchanged, and no harm done.”

“Why should there be any harm done?” was Sep’s prompt question.

Barebone was shaking hands with Miriam.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “Because there always is harm done, I suppose.”

Miriam was thinking that he had changed; that the man who had unmoored his boat at these steps six months ago had departed for ever, and that another had come back in his place. A minute later, as he turned to close the gate that shut off the rectory garden from the river-wall, chance ruled it that their eyes should meet for an instant, and she knew that he had not changed; that he might, perhaps, never change so long as he lived. She turned abruptly and led the way to the house.

Sep had a hundred questions to ask, but only a few of them were personal. Children live in a world of their own, and are not slow to invite those whom they like to come into it, while to the others, they shut the door with a greater frankness than is permissible later in life.

“Father,” he explained, “has gone to see old Doy, who is dying.”

“Is he still dying? He will never die, I am sure; for he has been trying to do it ever since I remember,” laughed Barebone; who was interested, it seemed, in Sep’s affairs, and never noticed that Miriam was walking more quickly than they were.

“And I am rather anxious about him,” continued Sep, with the gravity that comes of a realised responsibility. “He moons along, you know, with his mind far away, and he doesn’t know the path across the marsh a bit. He is bound to lose his way, and it is getting dark. Suppose I shall have to go and look for him.”

“With a lantern,” suggested Loo, darkly, without looking toward Miriam.

“Oh, yes!” replied Sep, with delight. “With a lantern, of course. Nobody but a fool would go out on to the marshes after dark without a lantern. The weed on the water makes it the same as the grass, and that old woman who was nearly drowned last winter, you know, she walked straight in, and thought it was dry land.”

And Loo heard no more, for they were at the door; and Miriam, in the lighted hall, was waiting for them, with all the colour gone from her face.

“He is sure to be in in a few minutes,” she said; for she had heard the end of their talk. She could scarcely have helped hearing Loo’s weighty suggestion of a lantern, which had had the effect he must have anticipated. Sep was already hurriedly searching for matches. It would be difficult to dissuade him from his purpose. What boy would willingly give up the prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a bull’s-eye? Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She gained time, however, and was listening for Marvin’s footstep on the gravel all the while.

Sep found the matches–and it chanced that there was a sufficiency of oil in his lantern. He lighted up and went away, leaving an abominable smell of untrimmed wick behind him.

It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room, glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset sky.

Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.

“We will have tea as soon as they come in,” she said, in that voice of camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a woman–if such a friendship be possible. Is it?–who knows? “They will not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so long abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the alleviations. I don’t know which. And now, tell me all that has happened since you went away–if you care to.”

CHAPTER XXVII

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

Miriam’s manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as he could remember. He had once thought–indeed, he had made to her the accusation–that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day be deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.

Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great height or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in his friends. Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which peeped out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have suffered a chill. The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in “The Last Hope” with him, seemed to hold him at a distance. They nodded to him with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking hands. The hand which they would have held out readily enough, had he needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who climbs will lose more friends than the ne’er-do-well. Some may account this to human nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary: for jealousy, like love, lies hidden in unsuspected corners.

Juliette do Gemosac had been quite different to Loo since learning his story. Miriam alone remained unchanged. He had accused her of failing to rise superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, standing behind her in the fire-lit dining-room of the rectory, he retracted that accusation once and for all time in his own heart, though her justification came from a contrary direction to that from which it might have been expected.

Miriam alone remained a friend–and nothing else, he added, bitterly, in his own heart. And she seemed to assume that their friendship, begun in face of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from that burthen.

“I should like to hear,” she repeated, seeing that he was silent, “all that has happened since you went away; all that you may care to tell me.”

“My heritage, you mean?”

She moved in her seat but did not look round. She had laid aside her hat on coming into the house, and as she sat, leaning forward with her hands clasped together in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the fire which glowed blue and white for the salt water that was in the drift-wood, her hair, loosened by the wind, half concealed her face.

“Yes,” she answered, slowly.

“Do you know what it is–my heritage?” lapsing, as he often did when hurried by some pressing thought, into a colloquialism half French.

She shook her head, but made no audible reply.

“Do you suspect what it is?” he insisted.

“I may have suspected, perhaps,” she admitted, after a pause.

“When? How long?”

She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, she was no less so. She weighed the question. Perhaps she found no answer to it, for she turned toward the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. The light of the lamp there fell for a moment across her face.

“I think I hear them returning,” she said.

“No,” he retorted, “for I should hear them before you did. I was brought up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, if you would rather not. You ask what has happened since I went away. A great many things have happened which are of no importance. Such things always happen, do they not? But one night, when we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned your name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, so he perhaps spoke the truth–by accident. He said that you had always known that I might be the King of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, which are of no importance, and which I have already forgotten, but that I remember and always shall.”

“I have always known,” replied Miriam, “that Mr. Dormer Colville is a liar. It is written on his face, for those who care to read.”

A woman at bay is rarely merciful.

“And I thought for an instant,” pursued Loo, “that such a knowledge might have been in your mind that night, the last I was here, last summer, on the river-wall. I had a vague idea that it might have influenced in some way the reply you gave me then.”

He had come a step nearer and was standing over her. She could hear his hurried breathing.

“Oh, no,” she replied, in a calm voice full of friendliness. “You are quite wrong. The reason I gave you still holds good, and–and always will.”

In the brief silence that followed this clear statement of affairs, they both heard the rattle of the iron gate by the seawall. Sep and his father were coming. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front door, dimly visible in the shadow of the porch. While he did so Miriam passed her hand quickly across her face. When Loo turned again and glanced down at her, her attitude was unchanged.

“Will you look at me and say that again?” he asked, slowly.

“Certainly,” she replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and faced him with the light of the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling and self-confident.

“I thought,” he said, looking at her closely, “as I stood behind you, that there were tears in your eyes.”

She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and his father, who were already on the threshold.

“It must have been the firelight,” she said to Barebone as she passed him.

A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him by the hand with a vague and uncertain but kindly grasp.

“Sep came running to tell me that you were home again,” he said, struggling out of his overcoat. “Yes–yes. Home again to the old place. And little changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. _Tempora mutantur_, eh? and we _mutamur in illis_. But you are the same.”

“Of course. Why should I change? It is too late to change for the better now.”

“Never! Never say that. But we do not want you to change. We looked for you to come in a coach-and-four–did we not, Miriam? For I suppose you have secured your heritage, since you are here again. It is a great thing to possess riches–and a great responsibility. Come, let us have tea and not think of such things. Yes–yes. Let us forget that such a thing as a heritage ever came between us–eh, Miriam?”

And with a gesture of old-world politeness he stood aside for his niece to pass first into the dining-room, whither a servant had preceded them with a lamp.

“It will not be hard to do that,” replied Miriam, steadily, “because he tells me that he has not yet secured it.”

“All in good time–all in good time,” said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit with folded hands.

He asked many questions which were easy enough to answer; for he had no worldly wisdom himself, and did not look for it in other people. And then he related his own adventure–the great incident of his life–his visit to Paris.

“A matter of business,” he explained. “Some duplicates–one or two of my prints which I had decided to part with. Miriam also wished me to see into some small money matters of her own. Her guardian, John Turner, you may remember, resides in Paris. A schoolfellow of my own, by the way. But our ways diverged later in life. I found him unchanged–a kind heart–always a kind heart. He attempts to conceal it, as many do, under a flippant, almost a profane, manner of speech. _Brutum fulmen._ But I saw through it–I saw through it.”

And the rector beamed on Loo through his spectacles with an innocent delight in a Christian charity which he mistook for cunning.

“You see,” he went on, “we have spent a little money on the rectory. To-morrow you will see that we have made good the roof of the church. One could not ask the villagers to contribute, knowing that the children want boots and scarcely know the taste of jam. Yes, John Turner was very kind to me. He found me a buyer for one of my prints.”

The rector broke off with a sharp sigh and drank his tea.

“We shall never miss it,” he added, with the hopefulness of those who can blind themselves to facts. “Come, tell me your impressions of France.”

“I have been there before,” replied Loo, with a curtness so unusual as to make Miriam glance at him. “I have been there before, you know. It would be more interesting to hear your own impressions, which must be fresher.”

Miriam knew that he did not want to speak of France, and wondered why. But Marvin, eager to talk of his favourite study, seized the suggestion in all innocence. He had gone to Paris as he had wandered through life, with the mind of a child, eager, receptive, open to impression. Such minds pass by much that is of value, but to one or two conclusions they bring a perceptive comprehension which is photographic in its accuracy.

“I have followed her history with unflagging interest since boyhood,” he said, “but never until now have I understood France. I walked through the streets of Paris and I looked into the faces of the people, and I realised that the astonishing history of France is true. One can see it in those faces. The city is brilliant, beautiful, unreal. The reality is in the faces of the people. Do you remember what Wellington said of them half a century ago? ‘They are ripe,’ he said, ‘for another Napoleon.’ But he could not see that Napoleon on the political horizon. And that is what I saw in their faces. They are ripe for something–they know not what.”

“Did John Turner tell you that?” asked Loo, in an eager voice. “He who has lived in Paris all his life?”

And Miriam caught the thrill of excitement in the voice that put this question. She glanced at Loo. His eyes were bright and his cheeks colourless. She knew that she was in the presence of some feeling that she did not understand. It was odd that an old scholar, knowing nothing but history, could thus stir a listener whose touch had hitherto only skimmed the surface of life.

“No,” answered Marvin, with assurance. “I saw it myself in their faces. Ah! if another such as Napoleon could only arise–such as he, but different. Not an adventurer, but a King and the descendant of Kings–not allied, as Napoleon was, with a hundred other adventurers.”

“Yes,” said Loo, in a muffled voice, looking away toward the fire.

“A King whose wife should be a Queen,” pursued the dreamer.

“Yes,” said Loo again, encouragingly.

“They could save France,” concluded Marvin, taking off his spectacles and polishing them with a silk handkerchief. Loo turned and looked at him, for the action so characteristic of a mere onlooker indicated that the momentary concentration of a mind so stored with knowledge that confusion reigned there was passing away.

“From what?” asked Loo. “Save France from what?”

“From inevitable disaster, my boy,” replied Marvin, gravely. “That is what I saw in those gay streets.”

Loo glanced at him sharply. He had himself seen the same all through those provinces which must take their cue from Paris whether they will or no.

“What a career!” murmured Marvin. “What a mission for a man to have in life–to save France! One does not like to think of the world without a France to lead it in nearly everything, or with a France, a mere ghost of her former self, exploited, depleted by another Bonaparte. And we must look in vain for that man as did the good Duke years ago.”

“I should like to have a shot at it,” put in Sep, who had just despatched a large piece of cake.

“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed his father, only half in jest.

“Better sit all day under the lee of a boat and make nets, like Sea Andrew,” advised Loo, with a laugh.

“Do you think so?” said Miriam, without looking up.

“All the same, I’d like to have a shot at it,” persisted Sep. “Pass the cake, please.”

Loo had risen and was looking at the clock. His face was drawn and tired and his eyes grave.

“You will come in and see us as often as you can while you are here?” said the kindly rector, as if vaguely conscious of a change in this visitor. “You will always find a welcome whether you come in a coach-and-four or on foot–you know that.”

“Thank you–yes. I know that.”

The rector peered at him through his spectacles. “I hope,” he said, “that you will soon be successful in getting your own. You are worried about it, I fear. The responsibilities of wealth, perhaps. And yet many rich people are able to do good in the world, and must therefore be happy.”

“I do not suppose I shall ever be rich,” said Loo, with a careless laugh.

“No, perhaps not. But let us hope that all will be for the best. You must not attach too much importance to what I said about France, you know. I may be wrong. Let us hope I am. For I understand that your heritage is there.”

“Yes,” answered Loo, who was shaking hands with Sep and Miriam, “my heritage is there.”

“And you will go back to France?” inquired Marvin, holding out his hand.

“Yes,” was the reply, with a side glance in the direction of Miriam. “I shall go back to France.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

BAREBONE’S PRICE

At Farlingford, forgotten of the world, events move slowly and men’s minds assimilate change without shock. Old people look for death long before it arrives, so that when at last the great change comes it is effected quite calmly. There is no indecent haste, no scrambling to put a semblance of finish to the incomplete, as there is in the hurried death of cities. Young faces grow softly mellow without those lines and anxious crow’s-feet that mar the features of the middle-aged, who, to earn their daily bread or to kill the tedium of their lives, find it necessary to dwell in streets.

“Loo’s home again,” men told each other at “The Black Sailor”; and the women, who discussed the matter in the village street, had little to add to this bare piece of news. There was nothing unusual about it. Indeed, it was customary for Farlingford men to come home again. They always returned, at last, from wide wanderings, which a limited conversational capacity seemed to deprive of all interest. Those that stayed at home learnt a few names, and that was all.

“Where are ye now from, Willum?” the newly returned sailor would be kindly asked, with the sideward jerk of the head.

“A’m now from Va’paraiso.”

And that was all that there was to be said about Valparaiso and the experiences of this circumnavigator. Perhaps it was not considered good form to inquire further into that which was, after all, his own business. If you ask an East Anglian questions he will tell you nothing; if you do not inquire he will tell you less.

No one, therefore, asked Barebone any questions. More especially is it considered, in seafaring communities, impolite to make inquiry into your neighbour’s misfortune. If a man have the ill luck to lose his ship, he may well go through the rest of his life without hearing the mention of her name. It was understood in Farlingford that Loo Barebone had resigned his post on “The Last Hope” in order to claim a heritage in France. He had returned home, and was living quietly at Maidens Grave Farm with Mrs. Clubbe. It was, therefore, to be presumed that he had failed in his quest. This was hardly a matter for surprise to such as had inherited from their forefathers a profound distrust in Frenchmen.

The brief February days followed each other with that monotony, marked by small events, that quickly lays the years aside. Loo lingered on, with a vague indecision in his mind which increased as the weeks passed by and the spell of the wide marsh-lands closed round his soul. He took up again those studies which the necessity of earning a living had interrupted years before, and Septimus Marvin, who had never left off seeking, opened new historical gardens to him and bade him come in and dig.

Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to look up an obscure reference or elucidate an uncertain period. Nearly every evening, after the rectory dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and lingered until past Sep’s bedtime to discuss the day’s reading. Septimus Marvin, with an enthusiasm which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the way down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam followed–the man with the quick perception of his race, the woman with that instinctive and untiring search for the human motive which can put heart into a printed page of history.

Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such occupations; for history, already inexhaustible, grows in bulk day by day. Marvin was happier than he had ever been, for a great absorption is one of Heaven’s kindest gifts.

For Barebone, France and his quest there, the Marquis de Gemosac, Dormer Colville, Juliette, lapsed into a sort of dream, while Farlingford remained a quiet reality. Loo had not written to Dormer Colville. Captain Clubbe was trading between Alexandria and Bristol. “The Last Hope” was not to be expected in England before April. To communicate with Colville would be to turn that past dream, not wholly pleasant, into a grim reality. Loo therefore put off from day to day the evil moment. By nature and by training he was a man of action. He tried to persuade himself that he was made for a scholar and would be happy to pass the rest of his days in the study of that history which had occupied Septimus Marvin’s thoughts during a whole lifetime.

Perhaps he was right. He might have been happy enough to pass his days thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else. This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the most inconsistent of all human dreams; for it would have some things change and others remain ever as they are. Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a single day: love, least of all. For it must go forward or back.

“See!” cried Septimus Marvin, one evening, laying his hand on the open book before him. “See how strong are racial things. Here are the Bourbons for ever shutting their eyes to the obvious, for ever putting off the evil moment, for ever temporising–from father to son, father to son; generation after generation. Finally we come to Louis XVI. Read his letters to the Comte d’Artois. They are the letters of a man who knows the truth in his own heart and will not admit it even to himself.”

“Yes,” admitted Loo. “Yes–you are right. It is racial, one must suppose.”

And he glanced at Miriam, who did not meet his eyes but looked at the open page, with a smile on her lips half sad, wholly tolerant.

Next morning, Loo thought, he would write to Dormer Colville. But the following evening came, and he had not done so. He went, as usual, to the rectory, where the same kind welcome awaited him. Miriam knew that he had not written. Like him, she knew that an end of some sort must soon come. And the end came an hour later.

Some day, Barebone knew, Dormer Colville would arrive. Every morning he half looked for him on the sea-wall, between “The Black Sailor” and the rectory garden. Any evening, he was well aware, the smiling face might greet him in the lamp-lit drawing-room.

Sep had gone to bed earlier that night. The rector was reading aloud an endless collection of letters, from which the careful student could scarcely fail to gather side-lights on history. Both Miriam and Loo heard the clang of the iron gate on the sea-wall.

A minute or two later the old dog, who lived mysteriously in the back premises, barked, and presently the servant announced that a gentleman was desirous of speaking to the rector. There were not many gentlemen within a day’s walk of the rectory. Some one must have put up at “The Black Sailor.” Theoretically, the rector was at the call of any of his parishioners at all moments; but in practice the people of Farlingford never sought his help.

“A gentleman,” said Marvin, vaguely; “well, let him come in, Sarah.”

Miriam and Barebone sat silently looking at the door. But the man who appeared there was not Dormer Colville. It was John Turner.

He evinced no surprise on seeing Barebone, but shook hands with him with a little nod of the head, which somehow indicated that they had business together.

He accepted the chair brought forward by Marvin and warmed his hands at the fire, in no hurry, it would appear, to state the reason for this unceremonious call. After all, Marvin was his oldest friend and Miriam his ward. Between old friends, explanations are often better omitted.

“It is many years,” he said, at length, “since I heard their talk. They speak with their tongues and their teeth, but not their lips.”

“And their throats,” put in Marvin, eagerly. “That is because they are of Teuton descent. So different from the French, eh, Turner?”

Turner nodded a placid acquiescence. Then he turned, as far, it would appear, as the thickness of his neck allowed, toward Barebone.

“Saw in a French paper,” he said, “that the ‘Petite Jeanne’ had put in to Lowestoft, to replace a dinghy lost at sea. So I put two and two together. It is my business putting two and two together, and making five of them when I can, but they generally make four. I thought I should find you here.”

Loo made no answer. He had only seen John Turner once in his life–for a short hour, in a room full of people, at Royan. The banker stared straight in front of him for a few moments. Then he raised his sleepy little eyes directly to Miriam’s face. He heaved a sigh, and fell to studying the burning logs again. And the colour slowly rose to Miriam’s cheeks. The banker, it seemed, was about his business again, in one of those simple addition sums, which he sometimes solved correctly.

“To you,” he said, after a moment’s pause, with a glance in Loo’s direction, “to you, it must appear that I am interfering in what is not my own business. You are wrong there.”

He had clasped his hands across his abnormal waistcoat, and he half closed his eyes as he blinked at the fire.

“I am a sort of intermediary angel,” he went on, “between private persons in France and their friends in England. Nothing to do with state affairs, you understand, at least, very little. Many persons in England have relations or property in France. French persons fall in love with people on this side of the Channel, and vice versa. And, sooner or later, all these persons, who are in trouble with their property or their affections, come to me, because money is invariably at the bottom of the trouble. Money is invariably at the bottom of all trouble. And I represent money.”

He pursed up his lips and gazed somnolently at the fire.

“Ask anybody,” he went on, dreamily, after a pause, “if that is not the bare truth. Ask Colville, ask Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, ask Miriam Liston, sitting here beside us, if I exaggerate the importance of–of myself.”

“Every one,” admitted Barebone, cheerfully, “knows that you occupy a great position in Paris.”

Turner glanced at him and gave a thick chuckle in his throat.

“Thank you,” he said. “Very decent of you. And that point being established, I will explain further, that I am not here of my own free will. I am only an agent. No man in his senses would come to Farlingford in mid-winter unless–” he broke off, with a sharp sigh, and glanced down at Miriam’s slipper resting on the fender, “unless he was much younger than I am. I came because I was paid to do it. Came to make you a proposition.”

“To make me a proposition?” inquired Loo, as the identity of Turner’s hearers had become involved.

“Yes. And I should recommend you to give it your gravest consideration. It is one of the most foolish propositions, from the proposer’s point of view, that I have ever had to make. I should blush to make it, if it were any use blushing, but no one sees blushes on my cheeks now. Do not decide in a hurry–sleep on it. I always sleep on a question.”

He closed his eyes, and seemed about to compose himself to slumber then and there.

“I am no longer young,” he admitted, after a pause, “and therefore propose to take one of the few alleviations allowed to advancing years and an increasing avoirdupois. I am going to give you some advice. There is only one thing worth having in this life, and that is happiness. Even the possibility of it is worth all other possibilities put together. If a man have a chance of grasping happiness–I mean a home and the wife he wants…. and all that–he is wise to throw all other chances to the wind. Such, for instance, as the chance of greatness, of fame or wealth, of gratified vanity or satisfied ambition.”

He had spoken slowly, and at last he ceased speaking, as if overcome by a growing drowsiness. A queer silence followed this singular man’s words. Barebone had not resumed his seat. He was standing by the mantelpiece, as he often did, being quick and eager when interested, and not content to sit still and express himself calmly in words, but must needs emphasise his meaning by gestures and a hundred quick movements of the head.

“Go on,” he said. “Let us have the proposition.”

“And no more advice?”

Loo glanced at Miriam. He could see all three faces where he stood, but only by the light of the fire. Miriam was nearest to the hearth. He could see that her eyes were aglow–possibly with anger.

Barebone shrugged his shoulders.

“You are not an agent–you are an advocate,” he said.

Turner raised his eyes with the patience of a slumbering animal that has been prodded.

“Yes,” he said–“your advocate. There is one more chance I should advise any man to shun–to cast to the four winds, and hold on only to that tangible possibility of happiness in the present–it is the chance of enjoying, in some dim and distant future, the satisfaction of having, in a half-forgotten past, done one’s duty. One’s first duty is to secure, by all legitimate means, one’s own happiness.”

“What is the proposition?” interrupted Barebone, quickly; and Turner, beneath his heavy lids, had caught in the passing the glance from Miriam’s eyes, for which possibly both he and Loo Barebone had been waiting.

“Fifty thousand pounds,” replied the banker, bluntly, “in first-class English securities, in return for a written undertaking on your part to relinquish all claim to any heritage to which you may think yourself entitled in France. You will need to give your word of honour never to set foot on French soil–and that is all.”

“I never, until this moment,” replied Barebone, “knew the value of my own pretensions.”

“Yes,” said Turner, quietly; “that is the obvious retort. And having made it, you can now give a few minutes’ calm reflection to my proposition–say five minutes, until that clock strikes half-past nine–and then I am ready to answer any questions you may wish to ask.”

Barebone laughed good-humouredly, and so far fell in with the suggestion that he leant his elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece, and looked at the clock.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN THE DARK

Had John Turner been able to see round the curve of his own vast cheeks he might have perceived the answer to his proposition lurking in a little contemptuous smile at the corner of Miriam’s closed lips. Loo saw it there, and turned again to the contemplation of the clock on the mantelpiece which had already given a preliminary click.

Thus they waited until the minutes should elapse, and Turner, with a smile of simple pleasure at their ready acquiescence in his suggestion, probably reflected behind his vacuous face that silence rarely implies indecision.

When at last the clock struck, Loo turned to him with a laugh and a shake of the head as if the refusal were so self-evident that to put it into words were a work of supererogation.

“Who makes the offer?” he asked.

Turner smiled on him with visible approbation as upon a quick and worthy foe who fought a capable fight with weapons above the board.

“No matter–since you are disposed to refuse. The money is in my hands, as is the offer. Both are good. Both will hold good till to-morrow morning.”

Septimus Marvin gave a little exclamation of approval. He had been sitting by the table looking from one to the other over his spectacles with the eager smile of the listener who understands very little, and while wishing that he understood more, is eager to put in a word of approval or disapprobation on safe and general lines. It was quite obvious to John Turner, who had entered the room in ignorance on this point, that Marvin knew nothing of Barebone’s heritage in France while Miriam knew all.

“There is one point,” he said, “which is perhaps scarcely worth mentioning. The man who makes the offer is not _only the most unscrupulous_, but is likely to become one of the most powerful men in Eur–men I know. There is a reverse side to the medal. There always is a reverse side to the good things of this world. Should you refuse his ridiculously generous offer you will make an enemy for life–one who is nearing that point where men stop at nothing.”

Turner glanced at Miriam again. Her clean-cut features had a stony stillness and her eyes looked obstinately at the clock. The banker moved in his chair as if suddenly conscious that it was time to go.

“Do not,” he said to Barebone, “be misled or mislead yourself into a false estimate of the strength of your own case. The offer I make you does not in any way indicate that you are in a strong position. It merely shows the indolence of a man naturally open-handed, who would always rather pay than fight.”

“Especially if the money is not his own.”

“Yes,” admitted Turner, stolidly, “that is so. Especially if the money is not his own. I dare say you know the weakness of your own case: others know it too. A portrait is not much to go on. Portraits are so easily copied; so easily changed.”

He rose as he spoke and shook hands with Marvin.

Then he turned to Miriam, but he did not meet her glance. Last of all he shook hands with Barebone.

“Sleep on it,” he said. “Nothing like sleeping on a question. I am staying at ‘The Black Sailor.’ See you tomorrow.”

He had come, had transacted his business and gone, all in less than an hour, with an extraordinary leisureliness almost amounting to indolence. He had lounged into the house, and now he departed without haste or explanation. Never hurry, never explain, was the text upon which John Turner seemed to base the sleepy discourse of his life. For each of us is a living sermon to his fellows, and, it is to be feared, the majority are warnings.

Turner had dragged on his thick overcoat, not without Loo’s assistance, and, with the collar turned up about his ears, he went out into the night, leaving the three persons whom he had found in the drawing-room standing in the hall looking at the door which he closed decisively behind him. “Seize your happiness while you can,” he had urged. “If not–” and the decisive closing of a door on his departing heel said the rest.

The clocks struck ten. It was not worth while going back to the drawing-room. All Farlingford was abed in those days by nine o’clock. Barebone took his coat and prepared to follow Turner. Miriam was already lighting her bedroom candle. She bade the two men good night and went slowly upstairs. As she reached her own room she heard the front door closed behind Loo and the rattle of the chain under the uncertain fingers of Septimus Marvin. The sound of it was like the clink of that other chain by which Barebone had made fast his boat to the tottering post on the river-wall.

Miriam’s room was at the front of the house, and its square Georgian windows faced eastward across the river to the narrow spit of marsh-land and the open sea beyond it. A crescent of moon far gone on the wane, yellow and forlorn, was rising from the sea. An uncertain path of light lay across the face of the far-off tide-way–broken by a narrow strip of darkness and renewed again close at hand across the wide river almost to the sea-wall beneath the window. From this window no house could be seen by day–nothing but a vast expanse of water and land hardly less level and unbroken. No light was visible on sea or land now, nothing but the waning moon in a cold clear sky.

Miriam threw herself, all dressed, on her bed with the abandonment of one who is worn out by some great effort, and buried her face in the pillow.

Barebone’s way lay to the left along the river-wall by the side of the creek. Turner had gone to the right, taking the path that led down the river to the old quay and the village. Whereas Barebone must turn his back on Farlingford to reach the farm which still crouches behind a shelter of twisted oaks and still bears the name of Maiden’s Grave; though the name is now nothing but a word. For no one knows who the maiden was, or where her grave, or what brought her to it.

The crescent moon gave little light, but Loo knew his way beneath the stunted cedars and through the barricade of ilex drawn round the rectory on the northern side. His eyes, trained to darkness, saw the shadowy form of a man awaiting him beneath the cedars almost as soon as the door was closed.

He went toward him, perceiving with a sudden misgiving that it was not John Turner. A momentary silhouette against the northern sky showed that it was Colville, come at last.

“Quick–this way!” he whispered, and taking Barebone’s arm he led him through the bushes. He halted in a little open space between the ilex and the river-wall, which is fifteen feet high at the meeting of the creek and the larger stream. “There are three men, who are not Farlingford men, on the outer side of the sea-wall below the rectory landing. Turner must have placed them there. I’ll be even with him yet. There is a large fishing-smack lying at anchor inside the Ness–just across the marsh. It is the ‘Petite Jeanne.’ I found this out while you were in there. I could hear your voices.”

“Could you hear what he said?”

“No,” answered Colville, with a sudden return to his old manner, easy and sympathetic. “No–this is no time for joking, I can tell you that. You have had a narrow escape, I assure you, Barebone. That man, the Captain of the ‘Petite Jeanne,’ is well known. There are plenty of people in France who want to get quietly rid of some family encumbrance–a man in the way, you understand, a son too many, a husband too much, a stepson who will inherit–the world is full of superfluities. Well, the Captain of the ‘Petite Jeanne’ will take them a voyage for their health to the Iceland fisheries. They are so far and so remote–the Iceland fisheries. The climate is bad and accidents happen. And if the ‘Petite Jeanne’ returns short-handed, as she often does, the other boats do the same. It is only a question of a few entries in the custom-house books at Fecamp. Do you see?”

“Yes,” admitted Barebone, thoughtfully. “I see.”

“I suppose it suggested itself to you when you were on board, and that is why you took the first chance of escape.”

“Well, hardly; but I escaped, so it does not matter.”

“No.” acquiesced Colville. “It doesn’t matter. But how are we to get out of this? They are waiting for us under the sea-wall. Is there a way across the marsh?”

“Yes–I know a way. But where do you want to go to-night?”

“Out of this,” whispered Colville, eagerly. “Out of Farlingford and Suffolk before the morning if we can. I tell you there is a French gunboat at Harwich, and another in the North Sea. It may be chance and it may not. But I suspect there is a warrant out against you. And, failing that, there is the ‘Petite Jeanne’ hanging about waiting to kidnap you a second time. And Turner’s at the bottom of it, damn him!”

Again Dormer Colville allowed a glimpse to appear of another man quite different from the easy, indolent man-of-the-world, the well-dressed adventurer of a day when adventure was mostly sought in drawing-rooms, when scented and curled dandies were made or marred by women. For a moment Colville was roused to anger and seemed capable of manly action. But in an instant the humour passed and he shrugged his shoulders and gave a short, indifferent laugh beneath his breath.

“Come,” he said, “lead the way and I will follow. I have been out here since eight o’clock and it is deucedly cold. I followed Turner from Paris, for I knew he was on your scent. Once across the marsh we can talk without fear as we go along.”

Barebone obeyed mechanically, leading the way through the bushes to the kitchen-garden and over an iron fencing on to the open marsh. This stretched inland for two miles without a hedge or other fence but the sunken dykes which intersected it across and across. Any knowing his way could save two miles on the longer way by the only road connecting Farlingford with the mainland and tapping the great road that runs north and south a few miles inland.

There was no path, for few ever passed this way. By day, a solitary shepherd watched his flocks here. By night the marsh was deserted. Across some of the dykes a plank is thrown, the whereabouts of which is indicated by a post, waist-high, driven into the ground, easily enough seen by day, but hard to find after dark. Not all the dykes have a plank,