distinguished him from the poor inland lubbers who had no dealings
with water at all.

He had this evening laid aside his old sou'wester--worn in fair and
foul weather alike--for his Sunday hat. His head-part was therefore
official and lent additional value to the words recorded. He spoke
them, moreover, with a dim note of aggressiveness which might only
have been racy of a soil breeding men who are curt and clear of
speech. But there was more than an East Anglian bluffness in the
statement and the manner of its delivery, as his next observation at
once explained.

"Passen thinks it's over there by the yew-tree--but he's wrong.
That there one was a wash-up found by old Willem the lighthouse
keeper one morning early. No! this is where Frenchman was laid by."

He indicated with the toe of his sea-boot a crumbling grave which
had never been distinguished by a headstone. The grass grew high
all over Farlingford churchyard, almost hiding the mounds where the
forefathers slept side by side with the nameless "wash-ups," to whom
they had extended a last hospitality.

River Andrew had addressed his few remarks to the younger of his two
companions, a well-dressed, smartly set-up man of forty or
thereabouts, who in turn translated the gist of them into French for
the information of his senior, a little white-haired gentleman whom
he called "Monsieur le Marquis."

He spoke glibly enough in either tongue, with a certain indifference
of manner. This was essentially a man of cities, and one better