Not only was his dress too fine for Farlingford, but his personality was not in tune with this forgotten end of England. His movements were too quick for a slow-moving race of men; no fools, and wiser than their midland brethren; slow because they had yet to make sure that a better way of life had been discovered than that way in which their Saxon forefathers had always walked. Colville seemed to look at the world with an exploiting eye. He had a speculative mind. Had he lived at the end of the Victorian era instead of the beginning he might have been a notable financier. His quick glance took in all Farlingford in one comprehensive verdict. There was nothing to be made of it. It was uninteresting because it obviously had no future, nor encouraged any enterprise. He looked across the marshes indifferently, following the line of the river as it made its devious way between high dykes to the sea. And suddenly his eye lighted. There was a sail to the south. A schooner was standing in to the river mouth, her sails glowing rosily in the last of the sunset light. Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had noticed, and saw that landsman looking skyward with an eye that seemed to foretell the early demise of a favouring wind. “That's 'The Last Hope,'” he said, in answer to Dormer Colville's question. “And it will take all Seth Clubbe's seamanship to save the tide. 'The Last Hope.' There's many a 'Hope,' built at Farlingford, and that's the last, for the yard is closed and there's no more building now.” The Marquis de Gemosac had turned away from the grave, but as Colville approached him he looked back to it with a shake of the head. “After eight centuries of splendour, my friend,” he said. “Can that be the end--that?” “It is not the end,” answered Colville, cheerfully. “It is only the end of a chapter. Le roi est mort--vive le roi!” He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the schooner creeping in between the dykes. CHAPTER II. VIVE LE ROI “The Last Hope” had been expected for some days. It was known in Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to put her on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage. Captain Clubbe was a Farlingford man. “The Last Hope” was a Farlingford built ship, and Seth Clubbe was not the captain to go past his own port for the sake of saving a few pounds. “Farlingford's his nation,” they said of him down at the quay. “Born and bred here, man and boy. He's not likely to put her into a Thames dry-dock while the slip-way's standing empty.”