evening. There is a creek, you
know, runs down from Maiden's Grave to the river."

"Ah!" answered Colville thoughtfully, almost as if the creek and the
large lug-sail against the sky explained something which he had not
hitherto understood.

"I thought he might have come with you this evening," he added, after a
pause. "For I suppose everybody in Farlingford knows why we are here. He
does not seem very anxious to seek his fortune in France."

"No," answered Clubbe, lifting his stony face to the sky and studying
the little clouds that hovered overhead awaiting the moon. "No--you are
right."

Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left them. The Marquis de
Gemosac watched him depart, and made a gesture toward the darkness of
the night, into which he had vanished, indicative of a great despair.

"But," he exclaimed, "they are of a placidity--these English. There is
nothing to be done with them, my friend, nothing to be done with such
men as that. Now I understand how it is that they form a great nation.
It is merely because they stand and let you thump them until you are
tired, and then they proceed to do what they intended to do from the
first."

"That is because we know that he who jumps about most actively will be
the first to feel fatigue, Marquis," laughed Colville, pleasantly. "But
you must not judge all England from these eastern people. It is here
that you will find the concentrated essence of British tenacity and
stolidity--the leaven that leavens the whole."

"Then it is our misfortune to have to deal with these concentrated
English--that is all."

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders with that light despair which is
incomprehensible to any but men of Latin race.

"No, Marquis! there you are wrong," corrected Dormer Colville, with a
sudden gravity, "for we have in Captain Clubbe the very man we want--one
of the hardest to find in this chattering world--a man who will not say
too much. If we can only make him say what we want him to say he will
not ruin all by saying more. It is so much easier to say a word too
much than a word too little. And remember he speaks French as well as
English, though, being British, he pretends that he cannot."

Monsieur de Gemosac turned to peer at his companion in the darkness.

"You speak hopefully, my friend," he said. "There is something in your
voice--"

"Is there?" laughed Colville, who seemed elated. "There may well be.
For that man has been saying things, in t