ed of the excuse
given for his ignorance of Farlingford news.

"The old man--I thought so. I felt it when I looked at him. It was
perhaps a fellow feeling. I suppose I am a Frenchman after all. Clubbe
always says I am one when I am at the wheel and let the ship go off the
wind."

Miriam was looking along the dyke, peering into the gathering darkness.

"One of them is coming toward us now," she said, almost warningly. "Not
the Marquis de Gemosac, but the other--the Englishman."

"Confound him," muttered Barebone. "What does he want?"

And to judge from Mr. Dormer Colville's pace it would appear that he
chiefly desired to interrupt their tete-a-tete.

CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS

When River Andrew stated that there were few at Farlingford who knew
more of Frenchman than himself, it is to be presumed that he spoke by
the letter, and under the reserve that Captain Clubbe was not at the
moment on shore.

For Captain Clubbe had known Frenchman since boyhood.

"I understand," said Dormer Colville to him two or three days after
the arrival of "The Last Hope," "that the Marquis de Gemosac cannot do
better than apply to you for some information he desires to possess. In
fact, it is on that account that we are here."

The introduction had been a matter requiring patience. For Captain
Clubbe had not laid aside in his travels a certain East Anglian distrust
of the unknown. He had, of course, noted the presence of the strangers
when he landed at Farlingford quay, but his large, immobile face had
betrayed no peculiar interest. There had been plenty to tell him all
that was known of Monsieur de Gemosac and Dormer Colville, and a good
deal that was only surmised. But the imagination of even the darksome
River Andrew failed to soar successfully under the measuring blue eye,
and the total lack of comment of Captain Clubbe.

There was, indeed, little to tell, although the strangers had been seen
to go to the rectory in quite a friendly way, and had taken a glass of
sherry in the rector's study. Mrs. Clacy was responsible for this piece
of news, and her profession giving her the entree to almost every back
door in Farlingford enabled her to gather news at the fountain-head. For
Mrs. Clacy went out to oblige. She obliged the rectory on Mondays, and
Mrs. Clubbe, with what was technically described as the heavy wash, on
Tuesdays. Whatever Mrs. Clacy was asked to do she could perform with a
rough efficiency. But