



Produced by Les Bowler








THE LAST HOPE


By Henry Seton Merriman


     "What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried.
     "A hidden hope," the voice replied.



CONTENTS

     I.        LE ROI EST MORT
     II.       VIVE LE ROI
     III.      THE RETURN OF "THE LAST HOPE"
     IV.       THE MARQUIS'S CREED
     V.        ON THE <DW18>
     VI.       THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS
     VII.      ON THE SCENT
     VIII.     THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING
     IX.       A MISTAKE
     X.        IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE
     XI.       A BEGINNING
     XII.      THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC
     XIII.     WITHIN THE GATES
     XIV.      THE LIFTED VEIL
     XV.       THE TURN OF THE TIDE
     XVI.      THE GAMBLERS
     XVII.     ON THE PONT ROYAL
     XVIII.    THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS
     XIX.      IN THE BREACH
     XX.       "NINETEEN"
     XXI.      NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB
     XXII.     DROPPING THE PILOT
     XXIII.    A SIMPLE BANKER
     XXIV.     THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS
     XXV.      SANS RANCUNE
     XXVI.     RETURNED EMPTY
     XXVII.    OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
     XXVIII.   BAREBONE'S PRICE
     XXIX.     IN THE DARK
     XXX.      IN THE FURROW AGAIN
     XXXI.     THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY
     XXXII.    PRIMROSES
     XXXIII.   DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND
     XXXIV.    A SORDID MATTER
     XXXV.     A SQUARE MAN
     XXXVI.    MRS. ST. PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND
     XXXVII.   AN UNDERSTANDING
     XXXVIII.  A COUP-D'ETAT
     XXXIX.    "JOHN DARBY"
     XL.       FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE




CHAPTER I. LE ROI EST MORT



"There; that's it. That's where they buried Frenchman," said
Andrew--known as River Andrew. For there was another Andrew who earned
his living on the sea.

River Andrew had conducted the two gentlemen from "The Black Sailor" to
the churchyard by their own request. A message had been sent to him in
the morning that this service would be required of him, to which he had
returned the answer that they would have to wait until the evening. It
was his day to go round Marshford way with dried fish, he said; but in
the evening they could see the church if they still set their minds on
it.

River Andrew combined the light duties of grave-digger and clerk to the
parish of Farlingford in Suffolk with a small but steady business in
fish of his own drying, nets of his own netting, and pork slain and
dressed by his own weather-beaten hands.

For Farlingford lies in that part of England which reaches seaward
toward the Fatherland, and seems to have acquired from that proximity an
insatiable appetite for sausages and pork. On these coasts the killing
of pigs and the manufacture of sausages would appear to employ the
leisure of the few, who for one reason or another have been deemed unfit
for the sea. It is not our business to inquire why River Andrew had
never used the fickle element. All that lay in the past. And in a degree
he was saved from the disgrace of being a landsman by the smell of tar
and bloaters that heralded his coming, by the blue jersey and the brown
homespun trousers which he wore all the week, and by the saving word
which 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