‘Fustian, I doubt not. Come, sad soul’--he put a hand cheerily on the poor fellow’s shoulder--‘be of good heart. These are empty humours, that come of nothing. The seed in thee was never no man’s curse.’ Clerivault shook his head. For some days past he had been in a curiously dejected mood, silent and low-spirited. Often Brion had caught him with his eyes fixed upon him in a yearning wistful way, the meaning of which he could in no wise interpret. But it made him uneasy. Was the dear man sickening for something, he wondered? The thought gave him a queer turn. He had never even put to himself what the loss of Clerivault might, would mean to him; he had never so much as associated the image of death with that tough, wiry constitution. Nor would he now: merely to think of it seemed to bring the Impossible within the bounds of startling Possibility. ‘You do not feel ill, do you,’ he asked anxiously--‘in body, I mean?’ ‘Never sounder, Sir.’ ‘Then, what sick fancy is this? Has our enterprise proved a failure? Ask our Admiral what he thinks of it.’ The wild eyes opened at that, with a spark of fury in them. ‘Hark ye, Sir. His England is not my England. I’ll not take his word for that success. What blows we have struck have been against, not for, _my_ England. Will her gentle heart not hate me for it?’ ‘O, Clerivault, my dear! I see what haunts your mind. Well, we took no hand in those same felon blows.’ ‘Should we not have rather--to counter and invalidate them?’ ‘Ay, if we were resolved to meet with Master Doughty’s fate.’ ‘So would our England at least have known us for her true lovers; so would the professed passion of our hearts for her have been vindicated. Now I return to her in shame, a discredited champion, whom she will never wish to trust again.’ ‘O, this is foolish! What could we do in reason but what we have done? Treachery to our friends would not have sweetened England’s name.’ The paragon sighed profoundly. ‘That may be so,’ said he: ‘yet would I fain have struck one blow for her in our own right way, though I died for it.’ ‘No need to talk of dying.’ ‘What; would you miss me, sweetheart?’ ‘Peace, thou dear old croaker!’ ‘And my good master would miss me. Sometimes I think we should never have left him.’ Brion frowned. Those words touched a certain disquiet which had already more than once come to darken his own mind. ‘Well,’ he said, a little fretfully, ‘not the Fates can make us walk in our own footsteps backwards. If we have done wrong, we are speeding to retrieve it.’ ‘Nay’--the eyes softened lovingly--‘I meant no blame to thee, sweetling. Yet that is a strange thought of thine. Is Death indeed returning to that home of Time from which we started; and Hell, perhaps, retracing all our sins in loathing of them?’