ke a pillar
of smoke. To the south--so far as the eye could pierce the sea
haze--marshes. To the north--where the river ran between bare
dykes--marshes.

And withal a silence which was only intensified by the steady hum of the
wind through the gnarled branches of the few churchyard trees which turn
a crouching back toward the ocean.

In all the world--save, perhaps, in the Arctic world--it would be hard
to find a picture emphasising more clearly the fact that a man's life is
but a small matter, and the memory of it like the seed of grass upon the
wind to be blown away and no more recalled.

The bearer of one of the great names of France stood knee-deep in the
sun-tanned grass and looked slowly round as if seeking to imprint the
scene upon his memory. He turned to glance at the crumbling church
behind him, built long ago by men speaking the language in which his own
thoughts found shape. He looked slowly from end to end of the ill-kept
burial ground, crowded with the bones of the nameless and insignificant
dead, who, after a life passed in the daily struggle to wrest a
sufficiency of food from a barren soil, or the greater struggle to hold
their own against a greedy sea, had faded from the memory of the living,
leaving naught behind them but a little mound where the butcher put his
sheep to graze.

Monsieur de Gemosac was so absorbed in his reflections that he seemed to
forget his surroundings and stood above the grave, pointed out to him by
River Andrew, oblivious to the cold wind that blew in from the sea, deaf
to the clink of the sexton's inviting keys, forgetful of his companion
who stood patiently waiting within the porch. The Marquis was a little
bent man, spare of limb, heavy of shoulder, with snow-white hair against
which his skin, brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell, looked sallow like
old ivory. His face was small and aquiline; not the face of a clever
man, but clearly the face of an aristocrat. He had the grand manner too,
and that quiet air of self-absorption which usually envelops the bearers
of historic names.

Dormer Colville watched him with a good-natured patience which pointed,
as clearly as his attitude and yawning indifference, to the fact that he
was not at Farlingford for his own amusement.

Presently he lounged back again toward the Marquis and stood behind him.

"The wind is cold, Marquis," he said, pleasantly. "One of the coldest
spots in England. What would Mademoiselle say if I allowed