rd has always bred
seafaring men ready to give and take."

"So we were told yesterday by the rector. We had a long talk with him in
the morning. A clever man, if--"

Dormer Colville did not complete the remark, but broke off with a sigh.
He had no doubt seen trouble himself. For it is not always the ragged
and unkempt who have been sore buffeted by the world, but also such as
have a clean-washed look almost touching sleekness.

"Yes," said Clubbe, slowly and conclusively. "So you have seen the
parson."

"Of course," Colville remarked, cheerfully, after a pause; for we cannot
always be commiserating the unfortunate. "Of course, all this happened
before his time, and Monsieur de Gemosac does not want to learn from
hearsay, you understand, but at first hand. I fancy he would, for
instance, like to know when the woman, the--mother died."

Clubbe was looking straight in front of him. He turned in his
disconcerting, monumental way and looked at his questioner, who had
imitated with a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause before the
word mother. Colville smiled pleasantly at him.

"I tell you frankly, Captain," he said, "it would suit me better if she
wasn't the mother."

"I am not here to suit you," murmured Captain Clubbe, without haste or
hesitation.

"No. Well, let us say for the present that she was the mother. We can
discuss that another time. When did she die?"

"Seven years after landing here."

Colville made a mental calculation and nodded his head with satisfaction
at the end of it. He lighted another cigarette.

"I am a business man, Captain," he said at length. "Fair dealing and
a clean bond. That is what I have been brought up to. Confidence for
confidence. Before we go any further--" He paused and seemed to think
before committing himself. Perhaps he saw that Captain Clubbe did not
intend to go much further without some quid pro quo. "Before we go any
further, I think I may take it upon myself to let you into the Marquis's
confidence. It is about an inheritance, Captain. A great inheritance
and--well, that young fellow may well be the man. He may be born to
greater things than a seafaring life, Captain."

"I don't want any marquis to tell me that," answered Clubbe, with his
slow judicial smile. "For I've brought him up since the cradle. He's
been at sea with me in fair weather and foul--and he is not the same as
us."

CHAPTER VII. ON THE SCENT

Dormer Colville attached so much impor