instinct of long-gone forefathers, he made the sacred gesture, and said:

"Now I have not lived and loved in vain, thanks be to God!"

Even as joy opened wide the eyes of the Chevalier, who had been sorely
smitten through the friends of his heart, out at sea Night and Death were
closing the eyes of another wan old man who had been a traitor to his
country.

For the boat of the fugitives had scarcely cleared reefs and rocks, and
reached the open Channel, when Olivier Delagarde, uttering the same cry
as when Ranulph and the soldiers had found him wounded in the Grouville
road sixteen years before, suddenly started up from where he had lain
mumbling, and whispering incoherently, "Ranulph--they've killed me!"
fell back dead.

True to the instinct which had kept him faithful to one idea for sixteen
years, and in spite of the protests of Mattingley and Carterette--of the
despairing Carterette who felt the last thread of her hopes snap with his
going--Ranulph made ready to leave them. Bidding them good-bye, he
placed his father's body in the rowboat, and pulling back to the shore of
St. Aubin's Bay with his pale freight, carried it on his shoulders up to
the little house where he had lived so many years. There he kept the
death-watch alone.




CHAPTER XXXV