He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford. He had come on board merely to greet his old friends, to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, slowly and very legibly. "But I am not the man, you know," said Barebone, slowly. It was as if the sight of that just man had bidden him cry out the truth. "I am not the man they think me. My father was not the son of Louis XVI, I know that now. I did not know it at first, but I know it now. And I have been going on with the thing, all the same." Clubbe sat back in his chair. He was large and ponderous in body. And the habit of the body at length becomes the nature of the mind. "Who has been telling you that?" he asked. "Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and then the other. Only he and you and I know of it." "Then he must have told one lie," said Clubbe, reflectively. "One that we know of. And what he says is of no value either way; for he doesn't know. No one knows. Your father was a friend of mine, man and boy, and he didn't know. He was not the same as other men; I know that--but nothing more." "Then, if you were me, you would give yourself the benefit of the doubt?" asked Barebone, with a rather reckless laugh. "For the sake of others--for the sake of France?" "Not I," replied Clubbe, bluntly. "But it is practically impossible to go back now," explained Loo. "It would be the ruin of all my friends, the downfall of France. In my position, what would you do?" "I don't understand your position," replied Clubbe. "I don't understand politics; I am only a seafaring man. But there is only one thing to do--the square thing." "But," protested Dormer Colville's pupil, "I cannot throw over my friends. I cannot abandon France now." "The square thing," repeated the sailor, stubbornly. "The square thing; and damn your friends--damn France!" He rose as he spoke, for they had both heard the customs officers come on board; and these functionaries were now bowing at the cabin-door. CHAPTER XXXVI MRS. ST. PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND It was early in November that the report took wing in Paris that John Turner's bank was, after all, going to weather the storm. Dormer Colville was among the first to hear this news, and strangely enough he did not at once impart it to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. All through the year, John Turner had kept his client supplied with ready money. He had, moreover, made no change in his own mode of living. Which things are a mystery to all who have no money of their own nor the good fortune to handle other people's. There is no doubt some explanation of the fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail, and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect upon their daily comfort, but the unfinancial cannot expect to understand it.