No one took much notice of the two strangers. It is not considered
good manners in a seafaring community to appear to notice a new-
comer. Captain Clubbe was naturally the object of universal
attention. Was he not bringing foreign money into Farlingford,
where the local purses needed replenishing now that trade had fallen
away and agriculture was so sorely hampered by the lack of roads
across the marsh?

Clubbe pushed his way through the crowd to shake hands with the Rev.
Septimus Marvin, who seemed to emerge from a visionary world of his
own in order to perform that ceremony and to return thither on its
completion.

Then the majority of the onlookers straggled homeward, leaving a few
wives and sweethearts waiting by the steps, with patient eyes fixed
on the spidery figures in the rigging of "The Last Hope." Dormer
Colville and the Marquis de Gemosac were left alone, while the
rector stood a few yards away, glaring abstractedly at them through
his gold-rimmed spectacles as if they had been some strange flotsam
cast up by the high tide.

"I remember," said Colville to his companion, "that I have an
introduction to the pastor of the village, who, if I am not
mistaken, is even now contemplating opening a conversation. It was
given to me by my banker in Paris, who is a Suffolk man. You
remember, Marquis, John Turner, of the Rue Lafayette?"

"Yes--yes," answered the Marquis, absently. He was still watching
the retreating villagers, with eyes old and veiled by the trouble
that they had seen.