“He lived long enough to teach him to speak French and think like a Frenchman, and then he died,” said Captain Clubbe--“a young man reckoning by years, but in mind he was an older man than I am to-day.” “And his secret died with him?” suggested Dormer Colville, looking at the end of his cigar with a queer smile. But Captain Clubbe made no answer. “One may suppose that he wanted it to die with him, at all events,” added Colville, tentatively. “You are right,” was the reply, a local colloquialism in common use, as a clincher to a closed argument or an unwelcome truth. Captain Clubbe rose as he spoke and intimated his intention of departing, by jerking his head sideways at Monsieur de Gemosac, who, however, held out his hand with a Frenchman's conscientious desire to follow the English custom. “I'll be getting home,” said Clubbe, simply. As he spoke he peered across the marsh toward the river, and Colville, following the direction of his gaze, saw the black silhouette of a large lug-sail against the eastern sky, which was softly grey with the foreglow of the rising moon. “What is that?” asked Colville. “That's Loo Barebone going up with the sea-breeze. He has been down to the rectory. He mostly goes there in the 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.