the sea, and almost beneath his feet. There flashed on him at that
instant what little Guida Landresse had said a few days before as she lay
down beside this very stream, and watched the water wimpling by.
Trailing her fingers through it dreamily, the child had said to him:

"Ro, won't it never come back?" She always called him "Ro," because when
beginning to talk she could not say Ranulph.

Ro, won't it never come back? But while yet he recalled the words,
another sound mingled again with the stream-clac-clac! clac-clac!
Suddenly it came to him who was the wearer of the sabots making this
peculiar clatter in the night. It was Dormy Jamais, the man who never
slept. For two years the clac-clac of Dormy Jamais's sabots had not been
heard in the streets of St. Heliers--he had been wandering in France,
a daft pilgrim. Ranulph remembered how these sabots used to pass and
repass the doorway of his own home. It was said that while Dormy Jamais
paced the streets there was no need of guard or watchman. Many a time
had Ranulph shared his supper with the poor beganne whose origin no one
knew, whose real name had long since dropped into oblivion.

The rattle of the sabots came nearer, the footsteps were now in front of
the window. Even as Ranulph was about to knock and call the poor
vagrant's name, the clac-clac stopped, and then there came a sniffing at
the shutters as a dog sniffs at the door of a larder. Following the
sniffing came a guttural noise of emptiness and desire. Now there was no
mistake; it was the half-witted fellow beyond all doubt, and he could
help him--Dormy Jamais should help him: he should go and warn the
Governor and the soldiers at the Hospital, while he himself would speed
to Gorey in search of his father. He would alarm the regiment there at
the same time.