e Comtesse de
Chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin,
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the Province of the
Charente Inferieure. "I will not even tell you the story as it was told
to me, until one of you has seen the man. And then, if you ask me, I
will tell you. It is nothing to me, you understand. I am no dreamer,
but a very material person, who lives in France because he loves
the sunshine, and the cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no
government or want of government can deteriorate."

And Madame de Chantonnay, who liked Dormer Colville--with whom she
admitted she always felt herself in sympathy--smiled graciously in
response to his gallant bow. For she, too, was a materialist who loved
the sunshine and the cuisine; more especially the cuisine.

Moreover, Colville never persuaded the Marquis de Gemosac to come to
England. He went so far as to represent, in a realistic light, the
discomforts of the journey, and only at the earnest desire of
many persons concerned did he at length enter into the matter and
good-naturedly undertake to accompany the aged traveller.

So far as his story was concerned, he kept his word, entertaining the
Marquis on the journey and during their two days' sojourn at the humble
inn at Farlingford with that flow of sympathetic and easy conversation
which always made Madame de Chantonnay protest that he was no Englishman
at all, but all that there was of the most French. Has it not been seen
that Colville refused to translate the dark sayings of River Andrew by
the side of the grass-grown grave, which seemed to have been brought to
the notice of the travellers by the merest accident?

"I promised you that I should tell you nothing until you had seen him,"
he repeated, as the Marquis followed with his eyes the movements of the
group of which the man they called Loo Barebone formed the centre.

No one took much notice of the two strangers. It is not considered
good manners in a seafaring community to appear to notice a new-comer.
Captain Clubbe was naturally the object of universal attention. Was
he not bringing foreign money into Farlingford, where the local purses
needed replenishing now that trade had fallen away and agriculture was
so sorely hampered by the lack of roads across the marsh?

Clubbe pushed his way through the crowd to shake hands with the Rev.
Septimus Marvin, who seemed to emerge from a visionary world of his
own in order