s, two miles south of Royan. It was no easy matter to find
this spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loo
joined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helped
to make fast in a choppy sea.

They left the luggage on the jetty and walked across the silent sand
side by side.

"There," said Colville, pointing forward. "It is through that opening in
the pine-trees. A matter of five minutes and we shall be at my cousin's
house."

"It is very kind of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence," answered Barebone,
"to--well, to take me up. I suppose that is the best way to look at it."

Colville laughed quietly.

"Yes--put it thus, if you like," he said. They walked on in silence
for a few yards, and then Dormer Colville slipped his hand within his
companion's arm, as was the fashion among men even in England in those
more expansive days.

"I think I know how you feel," he said, suiting his step to Barebone's.
"You must feel like a man who is set down to a table to play a game of
which he knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that he holds a
hand all court-cards and trumps--and he doesn't know how to play them."

Barebone made no answer. He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe's
unconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and no
other has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, and
even she must guess the larger half.

"But as the game progresses," went on Colville, reassuringly, "you will
find out how it is played. You will even find that you are a skilled
player, and then the gambler's spirit will fire your blood and arouse
your energies. You will discover what a damned good game it is. The
great game--Barebone--the great game! And France is the country to play
it in."

He stamped his foot on the soil of France as he spoke.

"The moment I saw you I knew that you would do. No man better fitted to
play the game than yourself; for you have wit and quickness," went on
this friend and mentor, with a little pressure on his companion's arm.
"But--you will have to put your back into it, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well--I noticed at Farlingford a certain reluctance to begin. It is in
the blood, I suppose. There is, you know, in the Bourbon blood a certain
strain of--well, let us say of reluctance to begin. Others call it by
a different name. One is not a Bourbon for nothing, I suppose. And
everything--even if it be a vice--that serves to empha