ons, and with their hands round their
faces, shout their advice. And in answer to one and the other the
Captain looks over the side and says, 'You be damned.' That will be
the way to deal with some of your friends and all your enemies alike,
Barebone, if you mean to get on in France. You will have to look over
the side at the people in small boats who are shouting and say, 'You be
damned.'"

They were at the gate of a house now, set down in a clearing amid the
pine-trees.

"This is my cousin's house," said Dormer Colville. "It is to be your
home for the present. And you need not scruple, as she will tell you,
to consider it so. It is not a time to think of obligations, you
understand, or to consider that you are running into any one's debt.
You may remember that afterward, perhaps, but that is as may be. For
the present there is no question of obligations. We are all in the same
boat--all playing the same game."

And he laughed below his breath as he closed the gate with caution; for
it was late and the house seemed to hold none but sleepers.

"As for my cousin herself," he continued, as they went toward the
door, "you will find her easy to get on with-a clever woman, and a
good-looking one. Du reste--it is not in that direction that your
difficulties will lie. You will find it easy enough to get on with the
women of the party, I fancy--from what I have observed."

And again he seemed to be amused.

CHAPTER XVI. THE GAMBLERS

In a sense, politics must always represent the game that is most
attractive to the careful gambler. For one may play at it without having
anything to lose. It is one of the few games within the reach of the
adventurous, where no stake need be cast upon the table. The gambler who
takes up a political career plays to win or not to win. He may jump
up from the gutter and shout that he is the man of the moment, without
offering any proof of his assertion beyond the loudness of a strident
voice. And if no one listens to him he loses nothing but his breath.

And in France the man who shouts loudest is almost certain to have the
largest following. In England the same does not yet hold good, but the
day seems to be approaching when it will.

In France, ever since the great Revolution, men have leapt up from the
gutter to grasp the reins of power. Some, indeed, have sprung from the
gutter of a palace, which is no more wholesome, it would appear, than
the drain of any street, or a ditch th