Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left them. The Marquis
de Gemosac watched him depart, and made a gesture toward the
darkness of the night, into which he had vanished, indicative of a
great despair.

"But," he exclaimed, "they are of a placidity--these English. There
is nothing to be done with them, my friend, nothing to be done with
such men as that. Now I understand how it is that they form a great
nation. It is merely because they stand and let you thump them
until you are tired, and then they proceed to do what they intended
to do from the first."

"That is because we know that he who jumps about most actively will
be the first to feel fatigue, Marquis," laughed Colville,
pleasantly. "But you must not judge all England from these eastern
people. It is here that you will find the concentrated essence of
British tenacity and stolidity--the leaven that leavens the whole."

"Then it is our misfortune to have to deal with these concentrated
English--that is all."

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders with that light despair which is
incomprehensible to any but men of Latin race.

"No, Marquis! there you are wrong," corrected Dormer Colville, with
a sudden gravity, "for we have in Captain Clubbe the very man we
want--one of the hardest to find in this chattering world--a man who
will not say too much. If we can only make him say what we want him
to say he will not ruin all by saying more. It is so much easier to