cross the marshes
indifferently, following the line of the river as it made its devious
way between high dykes to the sea. And suddenly his eye lighted. There
was a sail to the south. A schooner was standing in to the river mouth,
her sails glowing rosily in the last of the sunset light.

Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had noticed, and saw that
landsman looking skyward with an eye that seemed to foretell the early
demise of a favouring wind.

"That's 'The Last Hope,'" he said, in answer to Dormer Colville's
question. "And it will take all Seth Clubbe's seamanship to save the
tide. 'The Last Hope.' There's many a 'Hope,' built at Farlingford, and
that's the last, for the yard is closed and there's no more building
now."

The Marquis de Gemosac had turned away from the grave, but as Colville
approached him he looked back to it with a shake of the head.

"After eight centuries of splendour, my friend," he said. "Can that be
the end--that?"

"It is not the end," answered Colville, cheerfully. "It is only the end
of a chapter. Le roi est mort--vive le roi!"

He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the schooner creeping in
between the dykes.

CHAPTER II. VIVE LE ROI

"The Last Hope" had been expected for some days. It was known in
Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to
put her on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage. Captain Clubbe
was a Farlingford man. "The Last Hope" was a Farlingford built ship, and
Seth Clubbe was not the captain to go past his own port for the sake of
saving a few pounds.

"Farlingford's his nation," they said of him down at the quay. "Born
and bred here, man and boy. He's not likely to put her into a Thames
dry-dock while the slip-way's standing empty."

All the village gossips naturally connected the arrival of the two
gentlemen from London with the expected return of "The Last Hope."
Captain Clubbe was known to have commercial relations with France. It
was currently reported that he could speak the language. No one could
tell the number of his voyages backward and forward from the Bay to
Bristol, to Yarmouth, and even to Bergen, carrying salt-fish to those
countries where their religion bids them eat that which they cannot
supply from their own waters, and bringing back wine from Bordeaux and
brandy from Charente.

It is not etiquette, however, on these wind-swept coasts to inquire too
closely into a man's business, and, as i