o'clock, and the long northern twilight was fading into darkness
now. The bell of Captain Clubbe's ship rang out the hour--a new
sound in the stillness of this forgotten town.

"The Last Hope," added Dormer Colville, with a queer laugh.



CHAPTER V. ON THE DYKE



Neither had spoken again when their thoughts were turned aside from
that story which Colville, instead of telling, had been called upon
to hear.

For the man whose story it presumably was passed across the green
ere the sound of the ship's bell had died away. He had changed his
clothes, or else it would have appeared that he was returning to his
ship. He walked with his head thrown up, with long lithe steps,
with a gait and carriage so unlike the heavy tread of men wearing
sea-boots all their working days, that none would have believed him
to be born and bred in Farlingford. For it is not only in books
that history is written, but in the turn of a head, in the sound of
a voice, in the vague and dreamy thoughts half formulated by the
human mind 'twixt sleeping and waking.

Monsieur de Gemosac paused, with his cigarette held poised halfway
to his lips, and watched the man go past, while Dormer Colville,
leaning back against the wall, scanned him sideways between lowered