over his and Torrington's recent
defeat. "There is. There is Beachy Head to be wiped out--oh, for our
next encounter with them!"

"Thereby," continued St. Georges, "my chance may come. For I may meet
De Roquemaure. The sentence on me said he was appointed captain in one
of the northern regiments; there have been stranger things than foes
to the death meeting on the field, on opposite sides. Then for the
child!"

"Ay, the child."

"For that I must go back to France, disguised it may be; nay, must be!
That will be easy. The language is mine--though because of my mother's
memory I have perfected myself in yours--in hers--there is nothing to
reveal who or what I am but one thing"--and he made a gesture toward
his shoulder where the hateful _fleur-de-lis_ was branded in
forever--"and that thing you may be sure none shall ever see again
until my body is prepared for the grave. But--which to do first? To
become a soldier or a sailor fighting for England, or travel disguised
to Troyes and find out if--if--my child still lives. That would be my
desire--only--only----"

"Only?" repeated the admiral, looking at him.

"Only," the other said--then broke off.

And Rooke knew as well as though St. Georges had uttered the words
what he would have said. He knew that the man before him was beggared,
that he had not a crown in the world to help him perform such a
journey.

CHAPTER XX.

"HURRY, HURRY, HURRY!"

St. Georges was lodged in an old inn on Tower Hill now, in a large
room that ran from the front to the back of the house and with, on the
latter side, a lookout upon an old churchyard, which in the
swift-coming spring of 1692--for it was now April of that year--was
green and bright with the new shooting buds. Here he worked hard to
earn a living, spending part of his day in translating a book or so
from French into English--at beggar's wages!--another part in giving
lessons in fencing and swordsmanship--he knowing every trick and
_passade_ of the French school--and a third in giving lessons in his
old language. And between them he managed to earn enough to support
existence while waiting for that which through the interest of Admiral
Rooke had been promised him--namely, permission to volunteer into the
first vessel taking detachments of recruits to sea with it.

Meanwhile, there were many about the court who had heard his story and
who knew he was a man who had once worn the red dress of the
_chiourme_--when h