Tappingham Marsh.

"Ay, where is he!" raged Trumble, hammering the table till the glasses
rang. "Let him come and answer for his own teaching; it's wasted time to
talk to this one; he's only the pupil. Where is the traitor?"

"Here," answered a voice from the doorway; and though the word was
spoken quietly it was nevertheless, at that juncture, silencing.
Everyone turned toward the door as Vanrevel entered. But the apoplectic
General, whom Crailey's speech had stirred to a fury beyond control,
almost leaped at Tom's throat.

"Here's the tea-sipping old Granny," he bellowed hoarsely. (He was
ordinarily very fond of Tom.) "Here's the master! Here's the man whose
example teaches Crailey Gray to throw mud at the flag. He'll stay here
at home with Crailey, of course, and throw more, while the others boys
march out to die under it."

"On the contrary," answered Tom, raising his voice, "I think you'll find
Crailey Gray the first to enlist, and as for myself, I've raised sixty
men in the country, and I want forty more from Rouen, in order to offer
the Governor a full company. So it's come to 'the King, not the man';
Polk is a pitiful trickster, but the country needs her sons; that's
enough for us to know; and while I won't drink to James Polk "--he
plunged a cup in the bowl and drew it out brimming--"I'll empty this to
the President!"

It was then that from fifty throats the long, wild shout went up that
stirred Rouen, and woke the people from their midnight beds for half a
mile around.

CHAPTER XIV. The Firm of Gray and Vanrevel

For the first time it was Crailey who sat waiting for Tom to come
home. In a chair drawn to his partner's desk in the dusty office, he
half-reclined, arms on the desk, his chin on his clenched fists. To
redeem the gloom he had lit a single candle, which painted him dimly
against the complete darkness of his own shadow, like a very old
portrait whose background time has solidified into shapeless browns; the
portrait of a fair-haired gentleman, the cavalier, or the Marquis, one
might have said at first glance; not describing it immediately as that
of a poet, for there was no mark of art upon Crailey, not even in his
hair, for they all wore it rather long then. Yet there was a mark upon
him, never more vivid than as he sat waiting in the loneliness of
that night for Tom Vanrevel; though what the mark was and what its
significance might have been puzzling to define. Perhaps, after all,
Fanch