"Not much to tell," said Clubbe, guardedly. "But what there is, is
no secret, so far as I know. It has not been told because it was
known long ago, and has been forgotten since. The man's dead and
buried, and there's an end of him."

"Of him, yes, but not of his race," answered Colville.

"You mean the lad?" inquired the Captain, turning his calm and
steady gaze to Colville's face. The whole man seemed to turn,
ponderously and steadily, like a siege-gun.

"That is what I meant," answered Colville. "You understand," he
went on to explain, as if urged thereto by the fixed glance of the
clear blue eye--"you understand, it is none of my business. I am
only here as the Marquis de Gemosac's friend. Know him in his own
country, where I live most of the time."

Clubbe nodded.

"Frenchman was picked up at sea fifty-five years ago this July," he
narrated, bluntly, "by the 'Martha and Mary' brig of this port. I
was apprentice at the time. Frenchman was a boy with fair hair and
a womanish face. Bit of a cry-baby I used to think him, but being a
boy myself I was perhaps hard on him. He was with his--well, his
mother."

Captain Clubbe paused. He took the cigar from his lips and
carefully replaced the outer leaf, which had wrinkled. Perhaps he
waited to be asked a question. Colville glanced at him sideways and
did not ask it.