to make on it?"

'Well, then, as man to man, I was bound to warn him that I'd set out to
run it into England without troubling the Revenue, and so I couldn't
rightly set bounds to my profits.'

'I guessed that all along,' said Puck.

'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst--
That wasn't a smuggler last and first.'

The children laughed.

'It's comical enough now,' said Pharaoh. 'But I didn't laugh then. Says
Talleyrand after a minute, "I am a bad accountant and I have several
calculations on hand at present. Shall we say twice the cost of the
cargo?"

'Say? I couldn't say a word. I sat choking and nodding like a China
image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, I won't say
how much, because you wouldn't believe it.

'"Oh! Bless you, abbe! God bless you!" I got it out at last.

'"Yes," he says, "I am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me
bishop now. Take this for my episcopal blessing," and he hands me the
paper.

'"He stole all that money from me," says Boney over my shoulder. "A Bank
of France is another of the things we must make. Are you mad?" he shouts
at Talleyrand.

'"Quite," says Talleyrand, getting up. "But be calm; the disease will
never attack you. It is called gratitude. This gentleman found me in the
street and fed me when I was hungry."

'"I see; and he has made a fine scene of it and you have paid him, I
suppose. Meantime, France waits."

'"Oh! poor France!" says Talleyrand. "Good-bye, Candide," he says to
me. "By the way," he says, "have you yet got Red Jacket's permission to
tell me what the President said to his Cabinet after Monsieur Genet rode
away?"

'I couldn't speak, I could only shake my head, and Boney--so impatient
he was to go on with his doings--he ran at me and fair pushed me out of
the room. And that was all there was to it.'

Pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt pockets
as though it were a dead hare.

'Oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,' said Dan. 'How you got
home--and what old Maingon said on the barge--and wasn't your cousin
surprised when he had to give back the _Berthe Aurette_, and----'

'Tell us more about Toby!' cried Una.

'Yes, and Red Jacket,' said Dan.

'Won't you tell us any more?' they both pleaded.

Puck kicked the oak branch on the fire, till it sent up a column of
smoke that made them sneeze. When they had finished the Shaw was empty
except for old Hobden stamping through the larches.