"_Vive l'Anglais!_" he cried, "they can make a good bull's-eye can the John Bulls. You see this _bourse_? Bah! how wrinkled are its sides, how flattened under hard pressure of poverty! _Mon Dieu!_ did not the jade, Madame Hesslein, take the bread out of my mouth in the amplitude of her revenge? Very well. You who offer me the hand of friendship in return for that leetle favor, and also for the other not leetle favor of sending your Marguerite to save your life, shall take her fingers in yours, kiss them, and say: "Have you forgotten the small souvenir which you promised to my friend, the chevalier?" _Ma Mignonette_, now is the time to remember it. And she will remember it--my word upon it, she will, and will also urge upon you to let her souvenir me with a leetle more of her pin-money. And with the proceeds of your joint munificence I shall float again on the ascending tide of fortune, in my tight little bark, in spite of the _grande_ she devil who has ruined me." "Ah, your funds have run low, and you are here to replenish them?" "By gar! that is so, _mon ami_." The two men eyed each other; St Udo with raised eyebrows and slightly scornful amusement; the ex-tailor of Szegedin with an ingratiating impudence which showed that monsieur knew his man very well. "I have told you often that you are a greedy dog," said the colonel; "but I have no wish to see you under the feet of your favourite goddess, though I had much rather you had left your services to speak for themselves to our pockets. How much did Miss Walsingham agree to give you? Davenport, it seems to me, mentioned something of this to me." "Only one thousand of your pounds, _cher ami_, only one thousand; she was going to insist upon doubling it, but I implored her: 'Admirable lady, press no more upon me. At that time I little dreamed the days were coming when necessity should compel me to accept." "You shall have fifteen hundred to give you a start. I think you will manage upon that, you are such a man of resource." Said the colonel, admiringly, who had heard Davenport's grumbling account of the money arrangement with the chevalier, and remembered it very well. Whereupon monsieur got up, flung his arms around St. Udo, gave him a French embrace, vowed he was a lord, and then coolly announced himself the _attache_ of the little party, he rushed off to hunt up his quondam antagonist, Davenport, and discuss the management of affairs, with much impudent triumph, over that worthy gentleman for his former suspicions of the honor of a French chevalier. * * * * * The white moonbeams poured brilliant as diamond lights into the porch of the old church of Key West. The spicy odor of the citron trees and of the orange groves filled each passing breath; the boom of the far-off surf against the reefs made endless sounding, like the dull roar of a conch-shell at the ear.