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Rh turning to her husband, she asked: "What sort of man was he really, Eugène?" Captain Réal remained silent. "Did you ever ask yourself that question?" she insisted.

"Yes," said Réal. " But the only certain thing we can say of him is that he was not a bad Frenchman."

"Everything's in that," murmured the cripple, with fervent conviction, in the silence that fell upon Real's words and Arlette's faint sigh of memory.

The blue level of the Mediterranean, the charmer and the deceiver of audacious men, kept the secret of its fascination—hugged to its calm breast the victims of all the wars, calamities and tempests of its history, under the marvellous purity of the sunset sky. A few rosy clouds floated high up over the Esterel range. The breath of the evening breeze came to cool the heated rocks of Escampobar; and the mulberry-tree, the only big tree on the head of the peninsula, standing like a sentinel at the gate of the yard, sighed faintly in a shudder of all its leaves as if regretting the Brother of the Coast, the man of dark deeds, but of large heart, who often at noonday would lie down to sleep under its shade.