That was all the conversation which he and Anne had had on the point at the time, owing to the advent of a sailor into the cabin; but later, that evening in fact, as Anne was looking over the side at the water, tinged with sunset, which heaved slowly past, he suddenly said: "The ship I came from England in moved about more than this, M. le Chevalier." "Mon oncle," corrected La Vireville, looking round to see if anyone was in earshot. "Did it, Annibal? Were you frightened?" "I was down in a cabin," said Anne. "I could not see the sea then. But I knew I was in a ship. And I thought"--he paused, and then went on--"I thought you were drowned, mon oncle, and that it was my fault." "Thought I was drowned, child? How could that be--and why should it be your fault?" "Like my dream," said the little boy, staring hard over the bulwark at the sea. "You were drowned because . . . because I . . . I told _them_ things about you." His face was scarlet. "Well, my child," said the émigré, putting his arm round him, "it does not matter so much if you did." And, seeing signs of still greater emotional discomfort, he embellished this questionable statement. "It does not matter the scratch of a pin. I like to be talked about, Anne--it's a failing of mine! . . . But everybody doesn't, you know, little one. Did you tell them much about anybody else?" Anne had put his knuckles into his eyes, and in a small and faltering voice had confessed that he had talked about M. de Soucy and a little about M. l'Abbé, because 'they,' the old ladies, were Papa's friends, and he did not know . . . La Vireville took him on to his knee, and after waiting to see that the captain was not really coming right up to them, whispered to him not to cry. "You are not to blame, child," he went on. "Those old ladies cheated you, as they have cheated older and wiser folk. But there is one thing--a place, not a person . . . I wonder if you told them the name of the place where the expedition is going to land? Can you remember if you did?" His tone was very gentle as he put the question through Anne's rather tangled curls into his ear, but there was a lively anxiety in his eyes. "I could not remember," sighed the little boy almost apologetically. "I tried. They said they would give me a crown piece for my money-box if I could. I cannot remember it now." "Don't try!" said La Vireville hastily, thanking his Maker, though not doubting that the name would eventually be known through some other agency. "And I said," proceeded Anne, "that if I could remember it I would not tell them--no, that part came in my dream, where the Queen of Elfland was in the boat," he corrected conscientiously. "I said, really, that I often forgot names and remembered them, sometimes, afterwards." "And did they ask you afterwards? Did M. Duchâtel ask you?"