site wall took, with the sound of shrill clatter,
the reflexion of lighted back windows. He had simply given himself away
to a band of adventurers. The idea, the word itself, wore a romantic
horror for him--he had always lived on such safe lines. Later it assumed
a more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral, and
Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were adventurers not merely
because they didn't pay their debts, because they lived on society, but
because their whole view of life, dim and confused and instinctive, like
that of clever colour-blind animals, was speculative and rapacious and
mean. Oh they were "respectable," and that only made them more immondes.
The young man's analysis, while he brooded, put it at last very
simply--they were adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That
was the completest account of them--it was the law of their being. Even
when this truth became vivid to their ingenious inmate he remained
unconscious of how much his mind had been prepared for it by the
extraordinary little boy who had now become such a complication in his
life. Much less could he then calculate on the information he was still
to owe the extraordinary little boy.

CHAPTER V

But it was during the ensuing time that the real problem came up--the
problem of how far it was excusable to discuss the turpitude of parents
with a child of twelve, of thirteen, of fourteen. Absolutely inexcusable
and quite impossible it of course at first appeared; and indeed the
question didn't press for some time after Pemberton had received his
three hundred francs. They produced a temporary lull, a relief from the
sharpest pressure. The young man frugally amended his wardrobe and even
had a few francs in his pocket. He thought the Moreens looked at him as
if he were almost too smart, as if they ought to take care not to spoil
him. If Mr. Moreen hadn't been such a man of the world he would perhaps
have spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of a subordinate.
But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of the world to let things pass--he
had certainly shown that. It was singular how Pemberton guessed that
Morgan, though saying nothing about it, knew something had happened. But
three hundred francs, especially when one owed money, couldn't last for
ever; and when the treasure was gone--the boy knew when it had
failed--Morgan did break ground. The party had returned to Nice at the
beg