"Marry," interrupted the jailer, with a coarse laugh; "'tis well you are to try hanging, which will rest them all." "You have a very pretty wit, jailer, and so keen one would say it had been sharpened on an English whetstone. The French have no gift for such rapier thrusts." "Oh, to Hell with the French!" "Hell must be crammed full of foreigners. We English are always sending them there." "No doubt you'll know soon." "Very likely. If I do, I'll send you word--and by the way, so that I may not forget, what is your name?" "Philpotts." "Ah! Related to Robert Philpot of Kent?" "No; no such fine folk in our line. Besides, my name is Philpotts." "One _l_ and two _t's_?" "That same," replied the guard laconically, having no mind to be drawn into too friendly intercourse. "A droll name!" "None too droll for many an honest man to bear it." "Pardon me, I doubt not the honesty; but I question whether there be many Philpottses floating round the world. I never knew but one, and he lived in Somerset." "Somerset?" "Ay, in a little village on the coast between the Mendip hills and the river Axe." A look of recollection stole into the dull gray eyes, but still the shrewd self-restraint lingered. "How did the village lie, and what is its name?" "Its name is Regis, and it lies like a baby in a cradle, snugly tucked away in the dip of the hills; and there is a brook close beside it that comes tumbling over the rocks to lose itself in the Axe." Philpotts nodded unconscious assent. "Oh," continued Neville, "but I would like to see that river Axe once more! I do remember a famous pool where the fish leaped to the hook in the spring in a fashion to make a man's blood sing." "Did ye know Philpotts, then?" "Ay." "What mought his first name ha' been?" "James--James Philpotts. He had a farm of my father, and he and I were wont to go a-fishing together in the Axe, and one cold day he fell in. He couldn't swim, if I remember; and how like a drowned rat he did look when he got out!" At the memory, in spite of all his troubles, Neville laughed aloud. Philpotts slowly laid down his pipe, and propped it against a board, determined, before yielding to emotion, to attend to the safety of the tobacco-house. Then striding over to Neville he seized his hand in his own two brawny ones with a grip that made the other man wince. "Swim? no, that he couldn't, and it's his life and all he owes to you, sir, and he bade me look out for you in the New World and pay back the service an ever I got the chance; but 'twas the name misled me,--'Jack Neville,' says my brother; 'Christopher Neville,' says the Governor in the manor-house yesterday." "Ay, my name is Christopher; but as I had a cousin who bore the same, and who was often at Frome for months at a time, the family were wont to call me 'Jack,' after my father." "So--thou--art--the son of Master John Neville of Frome House?" The words came hard, as if forced out.