she always undertook it with reluctance. It was
not, she took care to mention, what she was accustomed to, but she would
do it to oblige. Her charge was eighteen-pence a day with her dinner,
and (she made the addition with a raised eyebrow, and the resigned sigh
of one who takes her meals as a duty toward those dependent on her) a
bit of tea at the end of the day.

It was on a Wednesday that Dormer Colville met Captain Clubbe face
to face in the street, and was forced to curb his friendly smile and
half-formed nod of salutation. For Captain Clubbe went past him with a
rigid face and steadily averted eyes, like a walking monument. For there
was something in the captain's deportment dimly suggestive of stone,
and the dignity of stillness. His face meant security, his large limbs a
slow, sure action.

Colville and Monsieur de Gemosac were on the quay in the afternoon
at high tide when "The Last Hope" was warped on to the slip-way. All
Farlingford was there too, and Captain Clubbe carried out the difficult
task with hardly any words at all from a corner of the jetty, with Loo
Barebone on board as second in command.

Captain Clubbe could not fail to perceive the strangers, for they stood
a few yards from him, Monsieur de Gemosac peering with his yellow
eyes toward the deck of "The Last Hope," where Barebone stood on the
forecastle giving the orders transmitted to him by a sign from his
taciturn captain. Colville seemed to take a greater interest in the
proceedings, and noted the skill and precision of the crew with the air
of a seaman.

Presently, Septimus Marvin wandered down the dyke and stood irresolutely
at the far corner of the jetty. He always approached his flock with
diffidence, although they treated him kindly enough, much as they
treated such of their own children as were handicapped in the race of
life by some malformation or mental incapacity.

Colville approached him and they stood side by side until "The Last
Hope" was safely moored and chocked. Then it was that the rector
introduced the two strangers to Captain Clubbe. It being a Wednesday,
Clubbe must have known all that there was to know, and more, of Monsieur
de Gemosac and Dormer Colville; for Mrs. Clacy, it will be remembered,
obliged Mrs. Clubbe on Tuesdays. Nothing, however, in the mask-like
face, large and square, of the ship-captain indicated that he knew aught
of his new acquaintances, or desired to know more. And when Colville
frankly explaine