He looked at her sharply, but the softness in her black eyes somehow reassured him, and he said quite kindly: "Nannin, 'tite garcon, nothing's matter." "I thought you'd be blithe as a sparrow with your father back from the grave!" Then as Ranulph's face seemed to darken, she added: "He's not worse--he's not worse ?" "No, no, he's well enough now," he said, forcing a smile.
She was not satisfied, but she went on talking, intent to find the cause of his abstraction.

"Only to think," she said--"only to think that he wasn't killed at all at the Battle of Jersey, and was a prisoner in France, and comes back here--and we all thought him dead, didn't we ?" "I left him for dead that morning on the Grouville road," he answered.
Then, as if with a great effort, and after the manner of one who has learned a part, he went on: "As the French ran away mad, paw of one on tail of other, they found him trying to drag himself along.

They nabbed him, and carried him aboard their boats to pilot them out from the Rocque Platte, and over to France.

Then because they hadn't gobbled us up here, what did the French Gover'ment do?
They clapped a lot of 'em in irons and sent 'em away to South America, and my father with 'em.

That's why we heard neither click nor clack of him all this time.