When the rumour at length reached Tom's ears, he, not unnaturally perhaps, set down the whole matter as a plot to oust him from his heritage and put Nance and Bernel in his place.

So his anger grew, and he was powerless. And the impotence of an angry man may lead him into gruesome paths. Smouldering fires burst out at times into devastating flames, and maddened bulls put down their heads and charge regardless of consequences.

When Tom Hamon asked Peter Mauger to lend him his gun to go rabbit-shooting one night, Peter, if he had been a thoughtful man, would have declined.

But Peter was above all things easy-going, and anything but thoughtful of such matters as surged gloomily in Tom's angry head, and he lent him his gun as a matter of course.

And Tom went off across the Coupee into Little Sark, nursing his black devil and thinking vaguely and gloomily of the things he would like to do. For to rob a man of his rights in this fashion was past a man's bearing, and if he was to be ruined for the sake of that solemn-faced slip of a Nance and that young limb of a Bernel, he might as well take payment for it all, and cut their crowing, and give them something to remember him by.

He had no very definite intentions. His mind was a chaos of whirling black furies. He would like to pay somebody out for the wrongs under which he was suffering—who, or how, was of little moment. He had been wounded, he wanted to hit back.

He turned off the Coupee to the left and struck down through the gorse and bracken towards the Pot, and then crept along the cliffs and across the fields towards La Closerie—still for three days his, in the reversion; after that, gone from him irrevocably—a galling shame and not to be borne by any man that called himself a man.

Should he lie in the hedge and shoot down the old man as he came in from those cursed mines which had started all the trouble? Or should he walk right into the house and shoot and fell whatever he came across? If he must suffer it would at all events be some satisfaction to think that he had made them suffer too.

From where he stood he could look right in through the open door, and could hear their voices—Nance and Bernel and Mrs. Hamon—the interlopers, the schemers, the stealers of his rights.

The shaft of light was eclipsed suddenly as Nance came out and tripped across the yard on some household duty.

He remembered how he used to terrify her by springing out of the darkness at her. She had helped to bring all this trouble about.

Why should he not—? Why should he not—?

And while his gun still shook in his hands to the wild throbbing of his pulses, Nance passed out of his sight into the barn.

The deed a man may do on the spur of the moment, when his brain is on fire, is not so readily done when it has to be thought about.

Then Mrs. Hamon came to the door, and called to Nance to bring with her a piece or two of wood for the fire.

Here was his chance! Here was the head and front of the offence, past, present, and future! If she had never come into the family there would have been no Nance, no Bernel, no selling of the farm, maybe. A movement of the arms, the crooking of a finger, and things would be even between them.

But—it would still be he who would have to pay—as always!

All through he had been the sufferer, and if he did this thing he must suffer still more—always he who must pay.

The man who hesitates is lost, or saved. When the contemplator of evil deeds begins also to contemplate consequences, reason is beginning to resume her sway.

Then he heard heavy footsteps and voices. His father and Stephen Gard.

Another chance! Gard he hated. There was a bruise on his right jaw still. And the old man!—he had cut him out of his inheritance by going crazy over those cursed mines.

"I'm sorry you have gone so far," Gard was saying as they passed. "If you had consulted me I should have advised against it. Mining is always more or less of a speculation. I would never, if I could help it, let any man put more into a mine than he can afford to lose."

"If you know a thing's a good thing you want all you can get out of it," said old Tom stoutly.

"Yes, if—" and they passed into the house, while Tom in the hedge was considering which of them he would soonest see dead.

Now they were all inside together. A full charge of small shot might do considerable and satisfactory damage.

But thought of the certain consequences to himself welled coldly up in him again, and he slunk noiselessly away, cursing himself for leaving undone the work he had come out to do.

On the common above the Pot, a terrified white scut rose almost under his feet and sped along in front of him. He blew it into rags, and was so ashamed of his prowess that he kicked the remnants into the gorse and went home empty-handed.



CHAPTER IX

HOW OLD TOM FOUND THE SILVER HEART

One of the first things Stephen Gard had seen to, when he got matters into his own hands, was the safeguarding of the mines from ever-possible irruption of the sea. The great steam pumps kept the workings reasonably clear of drainage water, but no earthly power could drain the sea if it once got in.

The central shafts had sunk far below sea-level. The lateral galleries had, in some cases, run out seawards and were now extending far under the sea itself.

From the whirling coils of the tides and races round the coast, he judged that the sea-bed was as seamed and broken and full of faults as the visible cliffs ashore.

In bad weather, the men in those submarine galleries and the outbranching tunnels could hear the crash of the waves above their heads, and the rolling and grinding of the mighty boulders with which they disported.

If, by chance, the sea should break through, the peril to life and property would be great.

He therefore caused to be constructed and fitted inside each tunnel, at the point where it branched from its main gallery, a stout iron door, roughly hinged at the top and falling, in case of need, into the flange of a thick wooden frame. The framework was fitted to the opening on the seaward side, in a groove cut deep into the rock round each side and top and bottom. The heavy iron door, when open, lay up against the roof of the tunnel and was supported by two wooden legs. If the sea should break through, the first rush of the water would sweep away the supporting legs, the iron door would fall with a crash into the flange of the wooden frame, and the greater the pressure the tighter it would fit.

So the weight of the sea would seal the iron door against the wooden casement, which would swell and press always tighter against the rock, and that boring would be closed for ever. And if any man should be inside the tunnel when the sea broke through, there he must stop, drowned like a rat in its hole, unless by a miracle he could make his way along the tunnel before the trap-door fell.

Gard never ceased to enjoin the utmost caution on the men who undertook these outermost experimental borings.

His strict injunctions were to cease work at the first sign of water in these undersea tunnels, make for the gallery, close the trap, and await events.

Believing absolutely in the existence of one or more great central deposits whence all these thin veins of silver had come, and hoping to strike them at every blow of his pick, old Tom Hamon was the keenest explorer and opener of new leads in the mine.

"The silver's there all right," he said, time and again, "it only wants finding," and he pushed ahead, here and there, wherever he thought the chances most favourable.

He took his rightful pay along with the rest for the work he did, but it was not for wages he wrought. Ever just beyond the point of his energetic pick lay fortune, and he was after it with all his heart and soul and bodily powers.

For months he had been following up a vein which ran out under the sea, and grew richer and richer as he laid it bare. He believed it would lead him to the mother vein, and that to the heart of all the Sark silver. And so he toiled, early and late, and knew no weariness.

His tunnel, in places not more than three and four feet high and between two and three feet wide, extended now several hundred feet under the sea, and was fitted at the gallery end with the usual raised iron door.

It was hot work in there, in the dim-lighted darkness, in spite of the fact that the sea was close above his head. Fortunately, here and there, he had come upon curious little chambers like empty bubbles in one-time molten rock, ten feet across and as much in height, some of them, and curiously whorled and wrought, and these allowed him breathing spaces and welcome relief from the crampings of the passage.

When he had broken into such a chamber it needed, at times, no little labour to rediscover his vein on the opposite side. But he always found it in time, and broke through the farther wall with unusual difficulty, and went on.

The men generally worked in pairs, but old Tom would have no one with him. He did all the work, picking and hauling the refuse single-handed. The work should be his alone, his alone the glory of the great and ultimate discovery.

The rocks above him sweated and dripped at times, but that was only to be expected and gave him no anxiety. Alone with his eager hopes he chipped and picked, and felt no loneliness because of the flame of hope that burned within him. Above him he could hear the long roll and growl of the wave-tormented boulders—now a dull, heavy fall like the blow of a gigantic mallet, and again a long-drawn crash like shingle grinding down a hillside. But these things he had heard before and had grown accustomed to.

And so it was fated that, one day, after patiently picking round a great piece of rock till it was loosened from its ages-old bed, he felt it tremble under his hand, and leaning his weight against it, it disappeared into space beyond.

That had happened before when he struck one of the chambers, and he felt no uneasiness. If there had been water beyond, it would have given him notice by oozing round the rock as he loosened it. The brief rush of foul gas, which always followed the opening of one of these hollows, he avoided by lying flat on the ground until he felt the air about him sweeter again.

Then, enlarging the aperture with his pick, he scrambled through into this chamber now first opened since time began.

It was like many he had seen before, but considerably larger. Holding his light at arm's length, above his head, a million little eyes twinkled back at him as the rays shot to and fro on the pointed facets of the rock crystals which hung from the roof and started out of the walls and ground.

The gleaming fingers seemed all pointed straight at him. Was it in mockery or in acknowledgment of his prowess?

For, in among the pointing fingers, it seemed to him that the silver-bearing veins ran thick as the setting of an ancient jewel, twisted and curling and winding in and out so that his eyes were dazzled with the wonder of it all.

"A man! A man at last! Since time began we have awaited him, and this is he at last!" so those myriad eyes and pointing fingers seemed to cry to him.

And up above, the roar and growl of the sea sounded closer than ever before.

But he had found his treasure and he heeded nought beside. Here, of a surety, he said to himself, was the silver heart from which the scattered veins had been projected. He had found what he had sought with such labours and persistency. What else mattered?

And then, without a moment's warning—the end.

No signal crackings, no thin jets or streams from the green immensity beyond.

Just one universal collapse, one chaotic climacteric, begun and ended in the same instant, as the crust of the chamber, no longer supported by the in-pent air, dissolved under the irresistible pressure of the sea.

Where the sparkling chamber had been was a whirling vortex of bubbling green water, in which tumbled grotesquely the body of a man.

The water boiled furiously along the tunnel and foamed into the gallery. The wooden supports of the iron door gave way; the door sank slowly into its appointed place.

Old Tom Hamon was dead and buried.



CHAPTER X

HOW YOUNG TOM FOUND HIS MATCH

The news spread quickly.

Tom Hamon heard it as he sat brooding over his wrongs and cursing the chicken-heartedness and fear of consequences which had robbed him of his revenge.

He started up with an incredulous curse and tore across the Coupee to the mines to make sure.

But there was no doubt about it. Old Tom was dead: the six weeks were still two days short of their fulfilment; the property was his; his day had come.

He walked straight to La Closerie, and stalked grimly into the kitchen, where, as it happened, they were sitting over a doleful and long-delayed meal.

Mrs. Hamon had been too overwhelmed by the unexpected blow to consider all its bearings. Grannie, looking beyond, had foreseen consequences and trouble with Tom, and had sent for Stephen Gard and given him some elementary instruction relative to the laws of succession in Sark.

Tom stalked in upon them with malevolent triumph. They had tried their best to oust him from his inheritance and the act of God had spoiled them. He felt almost virtuous.

But his natural truculence, and his not altogether unnatural exultation at the frustration of these plans for his own upsetting, overcame all else. Of regret for their personal loss and his own he had none.

"Oh—ho! Mighty fine, aren't we, feasting on the best," he began. "Let me tell you all this is mine now, spite of all your dirty tricks, and you can get out, all of you, and the sooner the better. Eating my best butter, too! Ma fe, fat is good enough for the likes of you," and he stretched a long arm and lifted the dish of golden butter from the board—butter, too, which Nance and her mother had made themselves after also milking the cows.

"Put that down!" said Gard, in a voice like the taps of a hammer.

"You get out—bravache! Bretteur! I'm master here."

"In six weeks—if you live that long. Until things are properly divided you'll keep out of this, if you're well advised."

"I will, will I? We'll see about that, Mister Bully. I know what you're up to, trying to fool our Nance with your foreign ways, and I won't have it. She's not for the likes of you or any other man that's got a wife and children over in England—"

This was the suddenly-thought-of burden of a discussion over the cups one night at the canteen, soon after Gard's arrival, when the possibility of his being a married man had been mooted and had remained in Tom's turgid brain as a fact.

"By the Lord!" cried Gard, starting up in black fury, "if you can't behave yourself I'll break every bone in your body."

And Nance's face, which had unconsciously stiffened at Tom's words, glowed again at Gard's revelation of the natural man in him, and her eyes shone with various emotions—doubts, hopes, fears, and a keen interest in what would follow.

The first thing that followed was the dish of butter, which hurtled past Gard's head and crashed into the face of the clock, and then fell with a flop to the earthen floor.

The next was Tom's lowered head and cumbrous body, as he charged like a bull into Gard and both rolled to the ground, the table escaping catastrophe by a hair's-breadth.

Mrs. Hamon had sprung up with clasped hands and piteous face. Nance and Bernel had sprung up also, with distress in their faces but still more of interest. They had come to a certain reliance on Gard's powers, and how many and many a time had they longed to be able to give Tom a well-deserved thrashing!

Through the open door of her room came Grannie's hard little voice, "Now then! Now then! What are you about there?" but no one had time to tell her.

Gard was up in a moment, panting hard, for Tom's bull-head had caught him in the wind.

"If you want ... to fight ... come outside!" he jerked.

"—— you!" shouted Tom, as he struggled to his knees and then to his feet. "I'll smash you!" and he lowered his head and made another blind rush.

But this time Gard was ready for him, and a stout buffet on the ear as he passed sent him crashing in a heap into the bowels of the clock, which had witnessed no such doings since Tom's great-grandfather brought it home and stood it in its place, and it testified to its amazement at them by standing with hands uplifted at ten minutes to two until it was repaired many months afterwards.

Tom got up rather dazedly, and Gard took him by the shoulders and ran him outside before he had time to pull himself together.

"Now," said Gard, shaking him as a bull-dog might a calf. "See here! You're not wanted here at present, and if you make any more trouble you'll suffer for it," and he gave him a final whirl away from the house and went in and closed the door.

Tom stood gazing at it in dull fury, thought of smashing the window, picked up a stone, remembered just in time that it would be his window, so flung the stone and a curse against the door and departed.

"I'm sorry," said Gard, looking deprecatingly at Nance. "I'm afraid I lost my temper."

"It was all his fault," said Nance. "Did he hurt you?"

"Only my feelings. He had no right to say such things or do what he did."

"It's always good to see him licked," said Bernel with gusto. "Nance and I used to try, but he was too big for us."

Mrs. Hamon had gone in with a white face to explain things to Grannie.

She came back presently and said briefly to Gard, "She wants you," and he went in to the old lady.

"You did well, Stephen Gard," she chirped. "Stand by them, for they'll need it. He's a bad lot is Tom, and he'll make things uncomfortable when he comes here to live. When Nancy takes her third of what's left of the house, that'll be only two rooms, so you'll have to look out for another, and maybe you'll not find it easy to get one in Little Sark. If you take my advice you'll try Charles Guille at Clos Bourel, or Thomas Carre at the Plaisance Cottages by the Coupee, they're kindly folk both. I've told Nancy to get Philip Tanquerel of Val Creux to help her portion the lots, and it'll be no easy job, for Tom will choose the best and get all he can."

They were agreeably surprised to hear no more of Tom, but learned before long that, on the strength of his unexpected good fortune, he had gone over to Guernsey to pass, in ways that most appealed to him, the six weeks allowed by the law for the settlement of his father's affairs.

Within that six weeks Philip Tanquerel of Val Creux had, on Mrs. Hamon's behalf, to allot all old Tom's estate, house, fields, cattle, implements, furniture, into three as equal portions as he could contrive with his most careful balancing of pros and cons. For, with Solomon-like wisdom, Sark law entails upon the widow the apportionment of the three lots into which everything is divided, but allows the heir first choice of any two of them, the remaining lot becoming the widow's dower.

No light undertaking, therefore, the apportionment of those lots, or the widow may be left with only bedrooms to live in, and an ill proportion of grazing ground for her cattle and herself to live upon. For, be sure that when it comes to the picking of these lots, even the best of sons will pick the plums, and when such an one as Tom Hamon is in question it is as well to mingle the plums and the sloes with an exactitude of proportionment that will allow of no advantage either way.



CHAPTER XI

HOW GARD DREW NEARER TO HIS HEART'S DESIRE

Gard's isolation was brought home to him when he endeavoured to find another lodging in Little Sark.

Accommodation was, of course, limited. Many of the miners had to tramp in each day from Sark. There was still, in spite of all his tact and efforts, somewhat of a feeling against him as a new-comer, an innovator, a tightener of loose cords, and no one offered to change quarters to oblige him. And so, in the end, he took Grannie's advice and found a room in one of the thatch-roofed cottages which offered their white-washed shoulders to the road just where it rose out of the further side of the Coupee into Sark.

They were quiet, farmer-fisher folk who lived there, having nothing to do with the mines and little beyond a general interest in them.

When not at work, he was thrown much upon himself, and if in his rambles he chanced upon Bernel Hamon it was a treat, and if, as happened all too seldom, upon Nance as well, an enjoyment beyond words.

But Nance was a busy maid, with hens and chickens, and cows and calves, and pigs and piglets claiming her constant attention, and it was only now and again that she could so arrange her duties as to allow of a flight with Bernel—a flight which always took the way to the sea and developed presently into a bathing revel wherein she flung cares and clothes to the winds, or into a fishing excursion, in which pleasure and profit and somewhat of pain were evenly mixed.

For, though she loved the sea and ate fresh-caught fish with as much gusto as any, she hated seeing them caught—almost as much as she hated having her fowls or piglets slaughtered for eating purposes, and never would touch them—a delicacy of feeling at which Bernel openly scoffed but could not laugh her out of.

She had sentiments also regarding the rabbits Bernel shot on the cliffs, but being wild, and she herself having had no hand in their upbringing and not having known them intimately, she accepted them as natural provision, though not without compunctions at times concerning possible families of orphans left totally unprovided for.

When she did permit herself a few hours off duty she did it with a whole-hearted enjoyment—approaching the naive abandon of childhood—which, to Gard's sober restraint, when he was graciously permitted to witness it, was wholly charming.

By degrees, and especially after her father's tragic death, Nance's feelings towards the stranger had perceptibly changed.

He might be an alien, an Englishman; but he was at all events a Cornishman, and she had heard say that the men of Cornwall and of the Islands and of the Bretagne had much in common, just as their rugged coasts had. And England, after all, was allied to the Islands, belonged to them in fact, and was indeed quite as essential a part of the Queen's dominions as the Islands themselves, and to harbour unfriendly feeling towards your own relations—unless indeed, as in the case of Tom, they had given you ample cause—would be surely the mark of a small and narrow mind.

And he might be a miner; and mines, and most miners, were naturally hateful to her. But he had been a sailor, and was miner only by accident as it were, and she knew that he loved the sea. Allowance, she supposed, must be made for men getting twists in their brains—like her father. He had gone crazy over these mines though he had been sensible enough in other matters.

What her careful, surreptitious observation of him, from the depths and round the wings of her sun-bonnet, told her was that he was an upright man, and true, and bold, with a spirit which he kept well in hand but which could blaze like lightning on occasion, and a strength which he could turn to excellent purpose when the need arose.

And—and—she admitted it shyly to herself and not without wonder, and found herself dwelling upon it as she sang softly to the ping-pang of the milk into the pail, or the swoosh of it in the churn—he thought of her, Nance Hamon—perhaps he even admired her a little—any way he was certainly interested in her, and in his shy reserved way he showed a desire for her company which she no longer found pleasure in defeating as she had done at first.

Undoubtedly an odd feeling, this, of being cared for by an outside man—- but withal tending to increase of self-esteem and therefore not unpleasing.

Peter Mauger, indeed—but then she had never looked upon Peter as anything but Peter, and the shadow of Tom had always obscured him to her. Stephen Gard was a man, and a different kind of a man from Peter altogether.

She remembered, with a slight reddening still of the warm brown cheeks whenever she thought of it—how, on the previous Sunday afternoon, she and Bernel had gone running over the downs through the waist-high bracken towards Breniere, the tide in their favourite pool below the rocks being too high for bathing. And on the slope above the Cromlech they had come suddenly on Gard, lying there looking out over the sea towards L'Etat.

He had jumped up at sight of them and stood hesitating a moment.

"Going for a bathe?" he asked, knowing the usual course of their proceedings.

"Yes, we were," said Bernel. "You going?" with a glance at the towel Gard had brought out on the chance of a dip.

"I'd thought of it, but your tides and currents here are so troublesome—"

"Oh, we know all about 'em. They're all right when you know."

"I suppose so, but—" with a look at Nance, "I'll clear out."

"You're not coming?"

"Your sister wouldn't like it."

"Nance?" with a look of surprise. "She won't mind. Will you, Nance?"

Then it was her turn to hesitate, for bathing with Bernel was one thing, and with Mr. Gard quite another.

"You'll show me another time, Bernel," said Gard, picking up his towel. "I wouldn't like to spoil your fun now."

"But you wouldn't. Would he, Nance?"

"I don't mind—if you'll give me the cave."

"All the caves you want," said Bernel, scornful at such unusual stickling on the part of his chum.

"Quite sure you don't mind?" asked Gard, doubtful still.

"If I have the cave. It's generally the one who gets there first, and Bern goes quicker than I do."

"Of course. You're only a girl," laughed Bernel, as he raced on down the slope.

And Nance laughed too at his brotherly depreciation, and Gard, who had never regarded her as only a girl, and whose thoughts of her were very absorbing and uplifting, happening to catch her eye, laughed also, and so they went down towards the sea in pleasant enough humour and the nearest approach to good-fellowship they had yet attained.

Nance disappeared round a corner, and the next he saw of her she was swimming boldly out towards Breniere point, and in a moment he and Bernel were after her.

"Don't go past the point," jerked Bernel.

"She's gone."

"She's a fish and knows her way," and just then they ploughed into what at first looked to Gard like a perfectly smooth spot amid the troubled waters, and then he was lifted from below and flung awry and out of his stroke, and tossed and tumbled till he felt as helpless as a dead fish. Then a fresh coil of the bubbling tide whirled him to one side and he was out again in the safety of the dancing waves.

"You see?" cried Bernel. "That's what it's like," and shot into it headlong.

And Gard, treading water quietly at a safe distance, saw how, every here and there, great crowns of water came surging up from below, with such lunging force that they rose in some cases almost a foot above the neighbouring level of the sea, and he wondered how any swimmer could make way through them. And yet Nance had cleft them like a seal, and he could hardly make out her brown head bobbing among the distant waves.

"Is it safe for her?" he cried after Bernel, but the boy's only reply was a scornful wave of the arm as he pressed on to join her.

Gard had an ample swim, and was dressed and sitting on a rock, when they came leisurely in, and it seemed to him that never in his life had he seen anything half so pretty as those shining coils of chestnut hair with the sea-drops sparkling in them, and the bright energetic face below, browned with sun and wind, rosy-brown now with her long swim, and beaded like her hair with pearly drops.

As she swept along below, she gave just one quick up-glance, and then, with completest ignorance of his presence, turned her head to Bernel and chattered away to him with most determined nonchalance.

She and Bernel used the long effective side-stroke almost entirely, and the little arm that flashed in and out so tirelessly was as white as the garment that fluttered in wavy convolutions about the lithe little body below.

Gard, as he watched her, felt like a discoverer of hidden treasure, overwhelmed and intoxicated with the wonder of unexpected riches. He had come to this wild little land of Sark after silver, and he said to himself that he had found a pearl beyond price.

In a minute or two they were scrambling up the slope and flung themselves down beside him for a rest, feeling the strain of unusual exertion now that the brace and tonic of the water was off them.

"You are bold swimmers," said Gard.

"She's a fish in the water," said Bernel, "and she made me swim almost as soon as I could walk."

"You see," said Nance, in her decisive little way, "many of our Sark men won't learn to swim. They think it's mistrusting God. But that seems to me foolish. Every man who goes down to the sea ought to be able to swim—besides, it's terribly nice."

"Yes, surely, Sark men ought to be able to swim, and they have certainly no lack of opportunity. But it's a dangerous coast for those who don't know it. Look at that now," and he nodded to the foaming race in front of them, between Breniere and a gaunt rocky peak which rose like a mountain-top out of the lonely sea. "Why, it must be running five or six miles an hour."

From where they sat the sea seemed perfectly calm, a level plain of deepest blue, with pale green streaks under the rocks and dark purple patches further out, its surface just furrowed with tiny wind-ripples, and underneath, a long slow heave like the breathings of the spirit of the deep. But, smooth as the blue plain seemed, wave met rock with roar and turmoil, and between that outlying peak and the shore the waters tore and foamed with wild white crests—tumbling green ridges that were never two seconds the same. While all along the great black base of the peak the white waves rushed like mighty rockets, flinging long white arms up its ragged sides and crashing together at the end in dazzling bursts of foam.

"Wonderful!" said Gard. "I've lain here for hours watching it."

"I've swum it," said Nance quietly.

"So've I," said Bernel.

"Never! You two? I wonder you came back alive!"

"On the slack it's not so bad, and at half ebb."

"And what is there to see when you get there?"

"Oh, just rocks, and puffins and gulls. You can hardly walk without stepping on them. Do you remember how we sat and watched the baby gulls coming out, Nance?"

"Yes," nodded Nance. "And you nearly got your fingers bitten off by a puffin when you felt in its hole."

"Ma de, yes! They do bite."

"What do you call the rock?" asked Gard, nodding across at it.

"L'Etat," said Nance. "Mr. Cachemaille once told me that it had most likely at one time been joined on to Little Sark by a Coupee, just the same as Little Sark is joined to Sark. That's the Coupee, that shelf under water where the tide runs so fast. Some day, he said, perhaps our Coupee will go and we'll be an island just as L'Etat is."

"It won't be this week," said Bernel philosophically.

"It looks like the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water," said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an otherwise calm sea.

"I suppose that is what it is," said Nance. "It's far worse at the other end. You can't see it from here. No matter how smooth the sea is it seems to tumble down over some cliff under water and then come shooting up again, and it throws itself at the rocks and sends the spray up into the sky."

"I'd like to go and see it," said Gard. "But I don't think I would like to swim. Could one get a boat?"

"We have a boat with Nick Mollet in the bay below here," said Bernel. "But he's generally out fishing and you're always busy."

"I'll take a holiday some day and you shall take me over."

Time came when they went, but it was hardly a holiday undertaking.



CHAPTER XII

HOW NANCE CAME UP THE MAIN SHAFT WITHOUT GOING DOWN IT

It was a few days after this that Gard had another proof of Nance's and Bernel's fearlessness and prowess in the waters they had conquered into friendliness.

Bernel was a great fisherman. He could wheedle out rock-fish by the dozen while envious miners sat about him tugging hopefully at empty lines.

He had gone down one afternoon to the overhanging wooden slip at Port Gorey, and had excellent sport, until a sudden shift of the wind to the south-west began piling the waters into the gulf on an incoming tide. Then he drew in his lines and sat dangling his legs for a few minutes, before gathering up his catch and going home.

Nance saw him from the other headland and came tripping round to see how he had fared.

"Bern," she cried, as she came up. "Tell that man he's not safe down there. The waves are bad there sometimes."

"Hi, you!" cried Bernel, to a miner who had been watching his success and had then climbed down seaward over the furrowed black ledges, hoping to do better there. "Come back! It's not safe there."

But the fisherman, intent on his sport, either did not, or would not, hear him.

"Oh, well, if you won't," said Bernel.

And then, without warning, a wave greater than any that had gone before it, hurled itself up the rocks and came roaring over the black ledges into the bay, and the man was gone.

Nance and Bernel had straightened up instantly at the sound of its coming.

Their eyes swept the rocks, and caught a glimpse of the dark body tumbling with the cascade of foam into Port Gorey.

"Oh, Bern!" cried Nance, with up-clasped hands.

But Bernel, loosing his belt and kicking off his breeches with a glance at the derelict, launched himself clear of the pier with a shout. And Nance, seeing the bulk of the man, and careless of everything but Bernel who seemed so very small compared with him, threw off her sun-bonnet and linen jacket, loosed a button, and was gone like a white flash after the two of them.

Gard was in the assay office not far away. He heard the shout and ran out just in time to see Nance go, and running to the slip he saw their clothes lying and the meaning of it all.

Bern had hold of the miner by the collar of his coat, and was doing his best with one hand to tow him to the shingle at the head of the gulf, the almost drowned one splashing wildly and doing his utmost to get hold of and drown his rescuer. Every now and again Bernel found it necessary to let go in order to keep out of his way.

Nance swam steadily up and the sinking one made a frantic clutch at her.

"Lie quiet or you shall drown," she cried. "Do you hear? Lie quiet and you are safe! See!" and she held his right hand while Bernel took his left and the man found himself no longer sinking, and they struck out for the shingle.

Others of the miners had run down with ropes, but ropes were useless in that deep gulf. Nance and Bernel were doing the only thing possible, and Gard saw that they were all right now that the man had ceased to struggle.

He picked up Bernel's things, and Nance's, with a curious feeling of delight and a touch of shyness, her sun-bonnet, her little linen jacket, her woollen skirt, her neat little wooden sabots, and ran swiftly with them to the shaft at the head of the gulf.

They would make for the adit, he thought, and so gain the shaft and come up by the ladders, if, indeed, John Thomas was in any state to climb ladders.

"Bring some brandy," he shouted to one of the men, and ran on. Nance was more to him than all the miners in Sark, and it was not brandy she would be wanting, he knew, but her clothes.

And, since a man needs both his hands to go down almost perpendicular ladders, he left at the top all that she would not instantly need and took only the little jacket and the woollen skirt. These he rolled into a bundle as he ran, and gripped in his teeth as he began the descent, and rejoiced all the way down in this close intimacy with her clothing. Indeed, on one of the stages, when he stopped for a moment's breathing, he kissed the little garments devoutly, and then laughed shamefacedly at himself for his foolishness, and glanced round quickly lest any should have witnessed it.

So down, down, till he came to the level, and crept along the adit to the shore.

They had dragged John Thomas up on to the shingle, and he lay there half-dead and fuller of water than was his custom.

Nance looked up quickly at the sound of Gard's feet, and the paled-brown of her face flushed red at sight of him, and then a grateful gleam lighted it as he dropped her things into her hand and bent over John Thomas, who was showing signs of life in a dazed and water-logged fashion.

"You did splendidly, you two," he said to Bernel. "It's a grand thing to save a man's life, even if it's only John Thomas," for John Thomas had found this land of free spirits too much for him, and had become a soaker and an indifferent workman.

"He'll be all right after a bit," he added. "I told them to send down some brandy," at which John Thomas groaned heavily to show his extremity. "As soon as it comes, Bernel, you help Nance up the ladders. Then run home both of you. Your things are at the top, Bernel. And here comes the brandy. Now, up you go! Do you think you can manage the ladders?" he asked Nance.

"I'll manage them," and they crept away into the darkness of the adit, and Nance thought she had never been in such a hideous place in her life.



CHAPTER XIII

HOW GARD REFUSED AN OFFER AND MADE AN ENEMY

They had been most gratefully and graciously free from Tom since his father's death, but he reappeared a day or two before the end of the six weeks, and brought with him a wife from Guernsey—not even a Guernsey woman, however, but a Frenchwoman from the Cotentin—black-haired, black-eyed, good-looking, after the type that would please such an one as Tom Hamon—somewhat over-bold of face and manner for the rest of the family.

Philip Tanquerel had had to bring all his sagacity to bear on his difficult task of apportioning the lots, and Tom, who knew every inch of the ground and all its capacities, grinned viciously now and again at the acumen displayed in the divisions.

The allotment of the house-room had presented difficulties.

The great kitchen at La Closerie occupied the whole centre third of the ground floor, the remaining thirds of the space on each side being taken up with the rarely-used best room and three bedrooms, all pretty much of a size, and all opening into the kitchen. Up above, under the sloping thatch was the great solie or loft, entered from the outside through the door-window in the gable by means of a short wooden ladder.

Grannie's dower rights, when Tom's grandfather died, had obtained for her the two rooms constituting one-third of the house on the south side of the kitchen, and certain rights of use of the kitchen itself. As she needed only one room, she had bartered off the other and her kitchen rights to her son and his wife in exchange for food and attendance, and the arrangement had worked excellently.

But, on her first glimpse of young Tom's quick-eyed, bold-faced Frenchwoman, she had vowed she would have none of her; and in the end, as the result of some chaffering, it was arranged that Tom and his wife should have the kitchen and all the rooms north of it, while Mrs. Hamon and Nance and Bernel had the room next Grannie's for a kitchen, and the great loft for bedrooms, all the necessary and duly specified alterations to be made at Tom's expense, and Mr. Tanquerel to see them carried out at once. Grannie's other room was to become their sitting-room also and they were to provide for her as hitherto. By boarding up the doors leading to the kitchen, and making a new entrance to their own rooms, the families were therefore entirely separated, to every one's complete satisfaction.

The division of the furniture and kitchen utensils gave Mrs. Hamon all she needed. Tom, of course, took as droit d'ainesse, before the division, the family clock—which still bore signs of strife, and had refused to go since that night when Gard's buffet had sent him headlong into it; and the farm-ladders and the pilotins—the stone props on which the haystacks were built; and in addition to his own full share, as between himself and Nance and Bernel, he exacted from them to the uttermost farthing the extra seventh part of the value of all they received—an Island right, but honoured more in the breach than in the observance, and one which, in its exercise, tended to label the exerciser as unduly mean and grasping.

Beyond that, everything was so fairly well balanced that Tom found himself unable to secure all he had hoped, and so deemed himself ill-used, and did not hesitate to express himself in his usual forcible manner.

To obtain some of the things he specially wanted, Tanquerel had so arranged the lots that he must sacrifice others, and these little matters rankled in his mind and obscured his purview.

There was a good deal of unhappy wrangling, but in the end Mrs. Hamon and Nance found themselves with a large cornfield, one for pasture, and one for mixed crops, potatoes, beans and so on, besides rights of grazing and gorse-cutting on a certain stretch of cliff common.

They had also a pony and two cows, and two pigs and a couple of dozen hens and a cock—quite enough to keep Nance busy; and to them also fell an adequate share of the byres and barns, and the free use of the well.

Tom, however, still looked upon them as interlopers, and grudged them every stick and stone, and hoof and claw. If they had never come into the family all would have been his. Whatever they had they had snatched out of his mouth.

If it had not been for Philip Tanquerel the alterations agreed on would never have been completed. He got down the carpenter and mason from Sark, stood over them, day by day, till the work was done, and then referred them to Tom for payment—and a pleasant and lively time they had in getting it.

The conditions resulting from all this were just such as have prevailed in hundreds of similar cases, such as are almost inevitable from the minute divisions and sub-divisions of small properties. When ill-feeling has prevailed beforehand it is by no means likely to be lessened by the unavoidable friction of such a distribution.

The open ill-feeling was, however, all on Tom's side. The others had suffered him at closer quarters the greater part of their lives. It was to them a mighty relief to be boarded off from him, and to feel free at last from his unwelcome incursions.

He never spoke to any of them, and when they passed one another on their various farm duties a black look and a muttered curse was his only greeting.

By means of what fairy tales concerning himself, or his position, or Sark, he had induced the lively-eyed Julie to marry him, we may not know. But Mrs. Tom very soon let it be known that she considered herself woefully misled, and quite thrown away upon such a place as Sark, and still more so upon this ultima thule of Little Sark, which she volubly asserted was the very last place le bon Dieu had made, and the condition in which it was left did Him little credit.

She, at all events, showed no disinclination to chat with her neighbours. Very much the contrary. None of them could pass within range of her eyes and tongue without a greeting and an invitation to talk.

"Tiens donc, Nancie, ma petite!" she would cry, at sight of Nance. "What a hurry you are in. It is hurry and scurry and bustle from morning till night with you over there. The hens? Let them wait, ma garche, 'twill strengthen their legs to scratch a bit, and 'twill enlighten your mind to hear about Guernsey and Granville. Oh the beautiful country! Mon Dieu, if only I were back there!"

They all—except, perhaps, Grannie—felt for her—lonely in a strange land—and were inclined to do what they could to make her more contented. But she desired them chiefly as listeners, and the things she had to tell were little to their taste, and less to her credit from their point of view, though she herself evidently looked upon them as every-day matters, and calculated to inspire these simple island-folk with the respect due to a woman of the greater world outside.

Grannie's views of her grand-daughter-in-law had never altered from the first moment she set eyes on her.

When Mrs. Tom came in to hear herself talk, one afternoon when Tom was away fishing, the old lady simply sat and stared at her from the depths of her big black sun-bonnet, and never opened her lips or gave any sign of interest or hearing.

"Is she deaf?" asked Mrs. Tom after a while.

"Dear me, no. Grannie hears everything," said Mrs. Hamon, with a smile at thought of all the old lady would have to say presently.

"Nom d'un nom, then why doesn't she speak? Is it dumb she is?"

"Neither deaf nor dumb—nor yet a fool," rapped Grannie, so sharply that the visitor jumped.

And during the remainder of her visit, no matter to whom she was talking or what she was saying, Julie's snapping black eyes would inevitably keep working round to the depths of the big black sun-bonnet, and at times her discourse lost point and trailed to a ragged end.

"It's my belief that old woman next door is a witch," she said to her husband later on.

"She's an old devil," he said bluntly. "She'll put the evil eye on you if you don't take care."

"She ought to be burnt," said Mrs. Tom.

"All the same," said Tom musingly, "she's got money, so you'd best be as civil to her as she'll let you."

"Mon Dieu! My flesh creeps still at the way she looked at me. She has the evil eye without a doubt."

And Grannie?—"Mai grand doux! What does a woman like that want here?" said she. "A wide mouth and wanton eyes. La Closerie has never had these before—a Frenchwoman too!"—with withering contempt. For, odd as it may seem, among this people originally French, and still speaking a patois based, like their laws and customs, on the old Norman, there is no term of opprobrium more profound than "Frenchman."

Madame Julie flatly refused to subject herself to further peril from Grannie's keen but harmless gaze, and contented herself with such opportunities of enlarging Nance's outlook on life as casual chats about the farm-yard afforded, and found time heavy on her hands.

Ennui, before long, gave place to grumbling, and that to recrimination; and from what the others could not help hearing, through the boarded-up doors and the floor of the loft, Tom and his wife had a cat-and-dog time of it.

Gard had moved over to Plaisance with great regret. But nothing else was possible under the altered circumstances at La Closerie, so he made the best of it.

It was some consolation to learn that they also missed him.

"Everything's different," grumbled Bernel, one day when they met. "Tom and his wife quarrel so that we can hear them through the walls. And Grannie sits by the hour without opening her mouth. And mother and Nance are as quiet as if they were going to be sick. And I'm getting green-mouldy. Seems as if we'd got to the end of things, and nothing was ever going to happen again. I think I'll go to Guernsey."

"Do you think they'd like—I mean, would they mind if I came in for a chat now and then? It's pretty lonely up at Plaisance too."

"Oh, they'll mind and so will I. When'll you come?"

"I'll look in to-night as I come from the mines—if you're sure—"

"You come and try, and if you don't like it you needn't come again"—with a twinkle of the eye.

Nance did not strike him as looking as though she were going to be sick, when he went in that night, nor did her mother.

Grannie indeed had little to say, but then she was never over-talkative, and when Gard more than once looked at her, and wondered if she had fallen asleep, he always found the keen old eyes wide open, and eyeing him watchfully as ever out of the depths of the big black sun-bonnet.

Mrs. Hamon asked about his new quarters, and his quiet shake of the head and simple—"They're kindly folk, but it's somehow very different"—told its own tale.

"They're a bit short-handed, you see," he added, "and so they're all kept busy, and at times, I'm afraid, they wish me further."

"And you go all that way back for your dinner each day?" asked Mrs. Hamon thoughtfully.

"Well, I have tried taking it with me, but it's not very satisfactory."

"What would you say to coming here for it, as you used to? I think we could manage it, Nance. What do you say?"

"We could manage it all right," said Nance, "if—" and then, in spite of herself, she could not keep that telltale mouth of hers in order, and the attempt to repress a smile only emphasized the dimples at the corners. For Gard's face was as eager as a dog's at sight of a rat.

"It will save me such a lot of time," he explained—at which Nance dimpled again as she went out to feed her chickens, and left them to complete the new arrangement.

And if it had cost Gard every penny of his salary he would still have rejoiced at it, and considered his bargain a good one. As it was, it cost him no more than the trouble of rearranging his terms with the good folks at Plaisance, and it gave a new zest and enjoyment to life since it ensured a meeting with Nance at least once each day.

And not with Nance only!

Madame Julie, very weary of herself, and Tom, and her surroundings, and Sark, and life in general as understood in Sark, very soon became conscious of the regular visits next door of the best-looking young man she had yet seen in the Island, and was filled with curiosity concerning him.

"He's after that slip of a Nance," she said to herself. "And he has his own share of good looks, has that young man."—And then came the inevitable, "Mon Dieu, but I wish Tom had been made like that!"

To get a better view of him—and perhaps not without a vague idea of ulterior interest and amusement for herself—anything to add a dash of colour to the prevailing greyness of her surroundings—she was leaning on the gate next day when he came striding up to his dinner, and gave him, "Bon jour, m'sieur!" with much heartiness and the full benefit of her black eyes and white teeth.

"'Jour, madame!" and he whipped off his hat and passed on into the house.

"That was Madame Tom, I suppose, who was leaning over the gate, as I came in," he said, as they ate.

"I expect so," said Mrs. Hamon. "She generally seems to have time on her hands."

"When Tom's not there," snapped Grannie. "Got her hands full enough when he is."

"I should imagine Tom would not be too easy to get on with at times. Maybe he'll settle down now he's married."

"Doesn't sound like settling down sometimes," chirped the old lady again.

"Oh? I'm sorry to hear that. She doesn't look bad-tempered."

"Tom's got more'n enough for the two of them."

"I'm afraid she finds it a change from what she's been accustomed to," said Mrs. Hamon quietly. "She came in once or twice, but her talk is of things that don't interest us, and ours is of things that don't interest her, so we can't get as friendly as we would like to be."

"And Tom?"

"Tom considers us all robbers, as he always has done. He gives us his blackest face whenever he sees any of us."

"That's unpleasant, seeing you're such close neighbours."

"Yes, it's unpleasant, but we can't help it. It's just Tom. How is your work getting on?"

"Not as I would wish," said Gard, with a gloomy wag of the head. "Your Sark men are difficult—very difficult, and the others who ought to know better, and who do know better"—with more than a touch of warmth—"go on as though I was a slave-driver."

"Sark men are hard to drive," said Mrs. Hamon sympathetically.

"They know perfectly well that I want only what is just and right to the shareholders. They expect their pay to the last penny, but when I insist on a proper return for it they look at me as if they'd like to knock me on the head. It's disheartening work. I've been tempted at times to throw it all up and go back to England"—at which Nance's heart gave so unusual a little kick that she had difficulty in frowning it into quietude, and just then Bernel came in with his gun and a couple of rabbits.

"Who's going to England?" he asked. "I'll go too."

"No you won't," said Nance sharply. "We want you here."

"It's as dull as Beauregard pond and as dirty, since the m—aw—um!" with a deprecatory glance at Gard.

"You'd find most busy places just as dirty," said Gard.

"Then I'll go to sea. That's clean at all events."

"Let's hope things will brighten a bit. You wouldn't find the fo'c'sle of a trader as comfortable as La Closerie, my boy,"—and they fell to on their dinner and left the matter there.

"Dites-donc, Nannon, ma petite," said Mrs. Tom to Nance, a day or two later, "who is the joli gars who comes each day to see you?"

"Mr. Gard from the mines comes up here to get his dinner, if that's what you mean."

"Oh—ho! He comes for his dinner, does he? And is that all he comes for, little Miss Modesty?"

"That's all," said Nance solemnly.

"Oh yes, without a doubt, that's all. I think I'll ask him next time I see him. Why doesn't he go home for his dinner like other people?"

"He's living at Plaisance now and it's far to go. He used to live here, you know."

"Ma foi, no, I didn't know. He used to live here? And why did he go to Plaisance then?"

"We hadn't room for him, you see."

"But, Mon Dieu, we have room and to spare! There are those two bedrooms empty. Why shouldn't he—"

But Nance shook her head at that.

"Why then?" demanded Mrs. Tom, with visions of some one besides Tom to talk to of an evening—a good-looking, sensible one too. "Why?"

"He and Tom don't get on well together—"

"Pardi, I'm not surprised at that. It would need an angel out of heaven to get on with him sometimes. What induced me ever to marry such a grumbler I don't know. I wonder if Monsieur What-is-it?—Gard—would come back if I could arrange it?"

But Nance shook her head again.

"Ah—ha, ma garche, and you would sooner he did not—is it not so?"

"I'm quite sure he and Tom would never get on together, and I don't think Mr. Gard would come."

"It's worth trying, however. He would be some one to talk to of an evening any way."

And so, when Tom came in that evening, she tackled him on the subject.

"Say then, mon beau,"—and as she said it she could not but contrast his slouching bulk with the straight, well-knit figure of the other—"why should we not take in a lodger as all the rest do? Our two rooms there are empty and—"

"Who's the lodger?"

"There is one comes up every day to dinner next door, and would stop there altogether if they had the room. Tiens, what's this his name is? He's from the mines—"

"You mean Gard—the manager," scowled Tom.

"That's it—Monsieur Gard. Why shouldn't he—"

"Because I'd break his head if I got the chance, and he knows it. Comes up there to dinner, does he? How long's he been doing that?"

"For a week now. Couldn't you get over your bad feeling? It would be money in our pockets."

"No, I couldn't, and he wouldn't come if you asked him."

"Will you let me try?"

"I tell you he won't come."

"In that case there's no harm in trying. If I can persuade him, will you promise to be civil to him, and not try to break his head?"

"He won't come, I tell you."

"And I say he may."

"And you'll nag and nag till you get your own way, I suppose."

"Of course. What's the use of a woman's tongue if she can't get her own way with it? Will you promise to behave properly if he comes?"

"I'll behave if he behaves," he growled sulkily. "But we'll neither of us get the chance. He won't come."

"Eh bien, we'll see!"

And when Gard came up to dinner next day, she was leaning over the gate waiting for him, very tastefully dressed according to her lights, and with an engaging smile on her face.

"Dites donc, Monsieur Gard," she said pleasantly. "Our little Nannon was telling me you regretted having to live so far away. Why should you not come back and occupy your old room? It is lying empty there, and I would do my very best to make you comfortable, and you would be close to your friends all the time then, instead of having to go across that frightful Coupee."

"It is very kind of you, madame," and he stared back at her in much surprise, and found himself wondering what on earth had made her marry such a man as Tom Hamon. For she was undeniably good-looking and had all a Frenchwoman's knack of making the very best of all she had—abundant black hair, very neatly twisted up at the back of her head; white teeth and full red lips; straight, well-developed figure very neatly dressed; and large black eyes which looked capable of so many things, that they found it difficult to settle for any length of time to any one expression.

"It is very kind of you, madame," said Gard, "but—" and he stood looking at her and hesitating how to put it.

"You mean about Tom," she laughed. "But that is all past. I have spoken to him, and he promises to behave himself quite properly if you will come. Voila!"

Just for a moment the possibilities of the suggestion caught his mind. He would be near Nance all the time. He would be saved much tiresome walking to and fro. Especially he would be saved that passage of the Coupee, which at night, even with a lantern, was not a thing one easily got accustomed to, and on stormy nights was enough to make one's hair fly. Then this woman was very different from his present landlady, and would probably, he thought, have different notions of comfort.

The quick black eyes caught something of what was in him: and he, as suddenly, caught something of what lurked, consciously or unconsciously, in them, and a little tremor of repugnance shook his heart and braced him back to reason.

He shook his head. "It would not do, madame. He and I would never get on together, no matter how hard we tried. I thank you for the offer all the same," and he made as though to pass her.

"I wish you would come," she said, and laid a pleading hand on his arm. "I'm sure he would try to behave. I can generally manage him except when he's been drinking. Then I'm afraid of him, and wish some one else was at hand. But that's only when he's been out all night at the fishing, and it's soon over and done with. Do come, monsieur!"—It was almost a whisper now, and she leaned towards him—the rich dark face—the great solicitous eyes.

But she had mistaken her man. Perhaps she had not met many like him.

He shook off her hand almost brusquely.

"It is impossible, madame. I could not," and he pushed past just as Nance came to the door.

She had seen him coming, heard their voices outside, and wondered what was keeping him.

She turned back into the house when she saw Julie, wondering still more. For Gard's face was disturbed, and had in it something of the look she had seen more than once when he had faced Tom in his tantrums.

And, glancing past him, she had seen what he had not—Julie's face when he turned his back on her.

"Mon Gyu!" gasped Nance to herself, and went in wondering.

"She and Tom wanted me to take my old room again, and I refused," was all he said.

"Tom wanted you to go there?" said Mrs. Hamon in amazement.

"So she said."

Grannie's disparaging sniff was charged with libel.

* * * * *

"Well?" asked Tom of his wife, when he came in later on with Peter Mauger, who had come over for supper. "Got your lodger?"

"No."

"That's what I told you," with a provocative laugh.

"Oh, he'd have come quick enough."

"Would, would he? Then why didn't he?"

"I wouldn't trust myself alone in the house with that man."

"Ah!" said Tom, staring at her. "Always thought he was a bad lot myself, didn't I, Peter?"

Peter nodded.

"It's a wonder to me that Mrs. Hamon lets him run after that girl of hers as she does," said Julie.

"If I catch him up to any of his tricks I'll break his head for him."

"Maybe it would be a good thing for little Nance if you did."

"Knew he was a toad as soon as I set eyes on him, so did Peter. Didn't you, Peter?"

Peter nodded.

"What d'he say to you?" demanded Tom.

"Didn't say much. Asked if you were much away at the fishing and that. But the way he looked at me!—I've got the shivers down my back yet," and a virtuous little shudder shook her and made a visible impression on Peter.

"Peter and me'll maybe have a word with him one of these days, won't we, Peter?"

"Maybe," said Peter.

"We don't want toads like Gard running off with any of our Sark girls, do we, Peter?"

"No," said Peter.

"Mr. Gard had better look out for himself or take himself off before somebody does it for him. There's plenty wouldn't mind giving him a crack on the head and slipping him over the Coupee some dark night."

As to such extreme measures Peter offered no opinion. He looked vaguely round the big kitchen as though in search of something that used to be there, and said—

"How about supper?"



CHAPTER XIV

HOW THEY WENT THROUGH THE DARKNESS OF THE NARROW WAY

One dark night Gard sauntered down the cutting towards the Coupee, enjoying a last pipe before turning in.

This had become something of a habit with him. The people of Plaisance, hard at work all day in the fields, went early to bed and left him to follow when he pleased. And to stand securely in that deep cleft, just where the protecting walls broke off short and left the narrow path to waver on into the darkness, was always fascinating to him.

When the moon flooded the gulf on the left with shimmering silver, and the waves broke along the black rocks below in crisp white foam like silver frost, he would stand by the hour there and never tire of it.

The moon cast such a mystic glamour over those great voids of darkness and over the headlands, melting softly away, fold behind fold, on the right, while Little Sark became a mystery land into which the white path rambled enticingly and invited one to follow.

And to him, as his eyes followed it till it disappeared over the crown of the ridge, it was more than a mystery land—a land of promise, rich in La Closerie and Nance.

Always within him, as he watched, was the feeling that if the sweet slim figure should come tripping down the moonlit path towards him, he would be in no way astonished. When he stood there, watching, it seemed to him that it would be entirely fitting for her to come so, in the calm soft light that was as pure and sweet as herself.

And at times his eye would light on the grim black pile of L'Etat, lying out there in the silvery shimmer like some great monumental cairn, a rough and rugged heap of loneliness and mystery—the grimmer and lonelier by reason of the twinkling brightness of its setting. And then his thoughts would play about the lonely pile, and come back with a sense of homely relief to the fairy path which Nance's little feet had trod, in light and dark, and storm and shine, since ever she could walk.

He pictured her as a tiny girl running fearlessly across the grim pathway to school, dancing in the sunshine, bending to the storm, and all alone when she had been kept in—he wondered with a smile what she had been kept in for.

He thought of her, as he had seen her, walking to church, her usually blithe spirit tuned to sedateness by the very fact, and, to him, delightfully stiffened by the further fact that she, almost alone among her friends and school-fellows, wore Island costume, while all the rest flaunted it in all the colours of the rainbow. And he laughed happily to himself, for very joy, at thought of the sweet elusive face in the shadow of the great sun-bonnet. There was not a face in all Sark to compare with it, nor, for him, in all the world.

But this night, as be stood there pulling slowly at his pipe and thinking of Nance, was one of the black nights.

Later on there would be a remnant of a moon, but as yet the sky above was an ebon vault without a star, and the gulfs at his feet were pits of darkness out of which rose the voices of the sea in solemn rhythmic cadence.

Down in Grande Greve, on his right, the waves rolled in almost without a sound, as though they feared to disturb the darkness. From the intervening moments he could tell how slowly they crept to their curve. Their fall was a soft sibilation, a long-drawn sigh. The ever-restless sea for once seemed falling to sleep.

And then, as he listened into the darkness, a tiny elfish glimmer flickered in the void below, flickered and was gone, and he rubbed his eyes for playing him tricks. But the next wave broke slowly round the wide curve of the bay in a crescent of lambent flame, and a flood of soft, blue-green fire ran swelling up the beach and then with a sigh drew slowly back, and all was dark again. Again and again—each wave was a miracle of mystic beauty, and he stood there entranced long after his pipe had gone dead.

And as he stood gazing down at the wonder of it, his ear caught the sound of quick light footsteps coming towards him across the Coupee, and he marvelled at the intrepidity of this late traveller. If he had had to go across there that night, he would have gone step by step, with caution and a lantern; whereas here was no hesitation, but haste and assurance.

It was only when she had passed the last bastion, and was almost upon him, that he made out that it was a girl.

His heart gave a jump. She had been so much in his thought. Yet, even so, it was almost at a venture that he said—

"Nance?"

And yet, again, he had learned to recognize her footsteps at the farm, and where the heart is given the senses are subtly acute, and she had slackened her pace somewhat as she drew near.

"Yes; I am going to the doctor."

"Why—who—?"

"Grannie is ill—in pain. He will give me something to ease her." He had turned and was walking by her side.

"I am sorry. You will let me go with you?"

"There is no need at all—"

"No need, I know; but all the same it would be a pleasure to me to see you safely there and back."

She hurried on without speaking. If there had been any light, and he had dared to peep inside the black sun-bonnet, he might perhaps have found the hint of a smile overlaying her anxiety on Grannie's account.

By the ampler feel of things, and the easing of the slope, he knew they were out of the cutting, and presently they were passing Plaisance.

"If you would sooner I did not walk with you, I will fall behind; but I couldn't stop here and think of you going on alone," he said.

"That would be foolishness," she said gently. "But there is really no need. I have no fears of ghosts or anything like that."

"There might be other kinds of spirits about," he said quietly. "And when men drink as some of my fellows do, they are no respecters of persons. But this is surely very sudden. Your grandmother seemed all right at dinner-time."

"She had bad pains in the afternoon, and they have been getting worse. She did not want to have the doctor, but the things she took did her no good, and mother said I had better go and ask him for something more."

"And where is Bernel?"

"He went to the fishing with Billy Mollet, and he was not back."

"And suppose the doctor is not in?"

"They will know where he is, and I will go after him."

"Did you see those wonderful waves of fire as you came across the Coupee?"

"I have seen them often. When there is more sea on, and it breaks on the rocks, it is finer still. It is something in the water, Mr. Cachemaille told me."

"I heard your footsteps down there on the Coupee, but I couldn't see a sign of you till you were almost against me."

"I saw from the other side that some one was there, but I could not see who."

"You have most wonderful eyes in Sark."

"It is never quite dark to me on the darkest night. I suppose it is with being used to it."

"You'll have to help me across the Coupee."

"And how will you get back?"

"The moon will be up, and then I can see all right. I don't need much light, but I've not been brought up to see through solid black."

The doctor was fortunately in, and knew by ample experience what would ease Grannie's pains. So presently they were hurrying back along the dark road.

As they turned the corner by Vauroque an open doer cast a great shaft of light across the darkness, and there, just as on a previous occasion, on the wall lounged half-a-dozen men, and among them was Tom Hamon, who had come up to have a drink with his friend Peter.

At sight of him, Nance bent her head and tried to shrink into herself as she hurried past.

But Tom had seen her, and the sight of her alone with Gard at that time of night roused the virtuous indignation, and other more potent spirits, within him.

He sprang down into the road, shouting what sounded like a spate of curses in the patois.

Gard stopped and turned, with a keen recollection of the same thing having happened before. He remembered too how that occasion ended.

But Nance laid an entreating hand on his arm.

"Please—don't!"

Her voice sounded a little strange to him. If he had been able to see her face now he would have found it pallid, in spite of its usual healthy brown bloom.

She stood entreatingly till he turned and went on with her.

"He is evidently aching for another thrashing," he said grimly, as he stalked beside her.

And presently they were in the cutting, and the unnerving vastness of the gulfs opened out on either side. Gard felt like a blindfolded man stumbling along a plank.

He involuntarily put out a groping hand and took hold of her cloak. A little hand slipped out of the cloak and took his in charge, and so they went through the darkness of the narrow way.

He breathed more freely when the further slope was reached, and only then became aware that the hand that held his was all of a tremble. The next moment he perceived that she was sobbing quietly.

"Nance!" he cried. "What is it? You are crying. Is it anything I—"

"No, no, no!" sobbed the wounded soul convulsively.

"What then? Tell me!"

"I cannot. I cannot."

"Nance—dear!" and he sought her hand again and stood holding it firmly. "It is like stabs in my heart to hear you sobbing. I would give my life to save you from trouble. Do you believe me, dear?"

"Yes, yes—"

"And you can trust me, dear, can you not? You distrusted me at first, I know, but—"

"Oh, I do trust you, and I know you are good. And it is that that makes it so wicked of him to say such things about us—"

In her excitement she had let slip more than she intended. She stopped abruptly.

"Tom?"

She did not speak, but the wound welled open in another sob.

"Don't trouble about him, dear! I don't know what he said, but if it was meant to make you doubt me, it was not true. You are more to me than anything in the world, Nance, and I have never loved any other woman—except my mother. Do you believe me?"

"Yes—oh, yes! I cannot help believing you. Oh, I wish sometimes that Tom was dead. When I was very little I used to pray each night to God to kill him."

"I'll teach him to leave you alone."

"I must go now. Grannie is waiting for her medicine."

He took the little hand under his arm and pressed it close to his side, and they pushed on down the dark lanes till they came in sight of the lights of La Closerie.

Then he bent into the sun-bonnet and sealed his capture of the virginal fortress by a passionate kiss on the tremulous little lips. And she, with the frankness of a child, reached up and kissed him warmly back.

"Good-night, dear, and God bless you!" he said fervently.

"Can you find your way in the dark?"

"There is the moon. I shall be all right."

She bent her head and ran on towards the lights. He watched her go in at the door, and turned and went back along the lane, and his heart was high with the joy that was in him.



CHAPTER XV

HOW TWO FELL OUT

It was but a thin strip of a moon that had risen above the evening mists—a mere sickle of red gold—but such as it was it sufficed to lift the pall of darkness from the earth and set the black sky back into its proper place.

To Gard the night had suddenly become spacious and ample, and the peaceful slip of a moon, which grew paler and brighter every minute, was full of promise.

He was so full of Nance that he had almost forgotten Tom and his scurrilous insolences.

He crossed the Coupee without any difficulty, enjoyed over again the recollection of that last crossing, and stood in the cutting on the Sark side for a moment to marvel at the change an hour had made in his outlook on things in general.

Tom? Why, he could almost forgive Tom, for it was he who had helped to bring matters to a head—unconsciously, indeed, and probably quite against his wish. Still, he had been the instrument—the drop of acid in the solution which had crystallized their love into set form and made it visible, and fixed it for life.

Truly, he was half inclined to consider himself under obligation to Tom—if only his boorishness could be kept in check for the future. For, of a certainty, he was not going to allow Nance to be made miserable by his loutish insolences.

He had climbed the cutting and was on the level, when he heard heavy footsteps coming towards him, and the next moment he was face to face with the object of his thoughts.

Possibly Tom had expected to meet him and had been preparing for the fray, for he opened at once with a volley of patois which to Gard was so much blank cartridge.

"Oh—ho, le velas—corrupteur! Amuseur! Seducteur! Ou quais noutre fille? Quais qu'on avait fait d'elle d'on?"

"Quite finished?" asked Gard quietly, as the other came to a stop for want of breath. "Say it all over again in English, and I'll know what you're talking about."

"English be——!" he broke out afresh, in a turgid mixture of tongues. "Seducteur, amuseur! Where's our Nance? Gaderabotin, what have you done with the girl? I know you, corrupteur! Running after men's wives—and our Nance, too! See then—you touch la garche and I'll—"

"See here! We've had enough of this," said Gard, gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him. "If you weren't drunk I'd thrash you within an inch of your life, you brute. Come back when you're sober, and I'll give you a lesson in manners."

Tom had been struggling to get his arms up. At last he wrenched himself free and came on like a bull. One of his flailing fists caught Gard across the face, flattening his nose and filling one eye with stars; the other hand, trying to grip his opponent, ripped open his coat, tearing away both button and cloth.

"You lout!" cried Gard, his blood up and dripping also from his nose. "If you must have it, you shall;" and he squared up to him to administer righteous punishment.

And then the futility of it came upon him. The man was three-parts drunk, in no condition for a fight, scarce able to attempt even to defend himself.

No punishment of Tom drunk would have the slightest moral effect on Tom sober. He would remember nothing about it in the morning, except that he had been knocked about.

When he received his next lesson in deportment it was Gard's earnest desire and hope that it might prove a lasting and final one.

So he decided to postpone it, and contented himself with warding and dodging his furious lunges and rushes, and gave him no blow in return. Until, at last, after one or two heavy falls of his own occasioning, Tom gave it up, spluttered a final commination on his opponent, and turned to go home.

He went blunderingly down into the hollow way, and Gard stood watching him in doubt.

It seemed hardly possible he could cross the Coupee in that state, and he felt a sort of moral responsibility towards him. Much as he detested him, he had no wish to see him go reeling over into Coupee bay.

So he set off after him to see him safely across, and Tom, hearing him coming, groped in the crumbling side wall till he found a rock of size, and sent it hurling up the path with another curse.

Then he blundered on, and Gard followed. And Tom stopped again by one of the pinnacles and sought another rock, and flung it, and it dropped slowly from point to point till it landed on the shingle three hundred feet below.

He stood there in the dim light, cursing volubly in patois and shaking his fist at Gard; but at last, to Gard's great relief, he humped his back and stumbled away up the cutting on the further side.

And Gard, very sick of it all, and with an aching head and a very tender nose, but withal with a warm glow at the heart which no aches or pains could damp down, turned and went home to bed.



CHAPTER XVI

HOW ONE FELL OVER

Gard's first waking thoughts next morning were of Nance entirely.

He would see her at dinner-time. How would he find her? Last night the disturbance of her feelings had shaken her out of herself somewhat, and shown her to him in new and delightful lights.

If, this morning, she should be to some extent withdrawn again into her natural modest shell, he would not be surprised; and he made up his mind, then and there, to be in no wise disappointed. Last night was a fact, a delightful fact, on which to build the rosy future.

It was a long time to wait till dinner-time to see her. What if he went round that way, before going to work, just to inquire if Tom got home all right.

And then the feeling of discomfort in his eye and nose, as though the one had shrunk to the size of a pin-point and the other had grown to the bulk of a turnip—brought back the whole matter, and on further consideration he decided not to go to the farm till the proper time. If he came across Tom, the fray would inevitably be resumed at once, and his right eye, at the moment, showed a decided disinclination to open to its usual extent, or to perform any of the functions properly demanded of a right eye contemplating battle.

He must get up at once and bathe it and bring it to reason.

Raw beef, he believed, was the correct treatment under the circumstances. But raw beef was almost as obtainable as raw moon, and even raw mutton he did not know where he could procure, nor whether it would answer the purpose.

So he bathed his bruises with much water, and reduced their excesses to some extent, but not enough to escape the eye of his hostess when he appeared at breakfast.

"Bin fighting?" she queried dispassionately.

"A one-sided fight. Tom Hamon was drunk last night and hit me in the face, but he was not in a condition to fight or I'd have taught him better manners."

"He's a rough piece," with a disparaging shake of the head. "It'd take a lot to knock him into shape. Try this," and she delved among her stores, and found him an ointment of her own compounding which took some of the soreness out of his bruises.

But black eyes and swollen noses are impertinently obtrusive and disdainful of disguise, and the captain's battle-flags provoked no little jocosity among his men that morning.

"Run up against su'then, cap'n?" asked John Hamon the engineer, who was one of the few who sided with him.

"Yes, against a drunken fist in the dark. When it's sober I'm going to give it a lesson in manners."

"Drunken fisses is hard to teach. You'll have your hands full, cap'n."

It seemed an unusually long morning, but dinner-time came at last and he hastened across to the farm, eager for the first sight of the sweet shy face hiding in the big sun-bonnet.

Quite contrary to his expectations Nance came hurrying to meet him. She had evidently been on the watch for him. Still more to his surprise, her face, instead of that look of shy reserve which he had been prepared for, was full of anxious questioning. The large dark eyes were full of something he had never seen in them before.

"Why—Nance—dear! What is the matter?" he asked quickly.

"Did you meet Tom again last night? Oh," at nearer sight of his bruised face, "you did, you did!"

"Yes, dear, I did. Or rather he met me—as you see."

"Did you fight with him?" she panted.

"He was too drunk to fight. He ran at me and gave me this, and my first inclination was to give him a sound thrashing. Then I saw it would be no good, in the condition he was in, so I just kept him at arm's length till he tired of it. He went off at last, and I was so afraid he might tumble off the Coupee that I followed him, and he hurled rocks at me whenever he came to a stand. But he got across all right, and I went back and went to bed. Now, what's all the trouble about?"

"He never came home," she jerked, with a catch in her voice which thought only of Tom had never put there.

"Never came home?"

"And they're all out looking for him."

"I wonder if he went back to Peter Mauger's.... If he tried to cross that Coupee again—in the condition he was in—"

"He didn't go back to Peter's. Julie went there first of all to ask."

"Good Lord, what can have become of him?"

The answer came unexpectedly round the corner of the house—Julie Hamon, in a state of utmost dishevelment and agitation, which turned instantly to venomous fury at the sight of Gard and Nance.

Her black hair seemed all a-bristle. Her black eyes flamed. Her dark face worked like a quicksand. Her skirts were wet to the waist. Her jacket was open at the top, as though she had wrenched at it in a fit of choking. Her strong bare throat throbbed convulsively. Her hands, half closed at her side, looked as though they wanted something to claw.

"Did you do it?" she cried hoarsely, stalking up to Gard.

"Do what?"

"Kill him."

"Tom?... You don't mean to say—"

"You ought to know. He's there in the school-house, broken to a jelly and his head staved in. And they say it's you he fought with last night. The marks of it are on your face"—her voice rose to a scream—"Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!"

"You wicked—thing!" cried Nance, pale to the lips.

"You—you—you!" foamed Julie. "You're as bad as he is. Because my man tried to save you from that—murderer—"

"Oh, you—wicked!—You're crazy," cried Nance, rushing at her as though to make an end of her.

And Julie, mad with the strain of the night's anxieties and their abrupt and terrible ending, uncurled her claws and struck at her with a snarl—tore off her sun-bonnet, and would have ripped up her face, if Gard had not flung his arms round her from the back and dragged her screaming and kicking towards her own door.

Mrs. Hamon had come running out at sound of the fray. Gard whirled the mad woman into her own house and Mrs. Hamon followed her and closed the door.

Gard turned to look for Nance.

She was nervously trying to tie on her sun-bonnet by one string.

"Nance, dear," he said, "you don't believe I had anything to do with this?"

"Oh no, no! I'm sure you hadn't. But—"

"But?" he asked, looking down into the pale face and bright anxious eyes.

"Oh, they may say you did it. They will think it. They are sure to think it, and they are so—"

"Don't trouble about it, dear. I know no more about it than you do, and they cannot get beyond that. Promise me you won't let it trouble you."

"Oh, I will try. But—"

"Have no fears on my account, Nance. I will go at once and tell them all I know about it."

He pressed her hands reassuringly, and she went into the house with downcast head and a face full of forebodings, and he set off at once for Sark.



CHAPTER XVII

HOW TOM WENT TO SCHOOL FOR THE LAST TIME

Mrs. Tom had had a troubled night. Anxiety at her husband's continued absence had in due time given way to anger, and anger in its turn to anxiety again.

In a state of mind compounded of these wearing emotions, she had set out in the early morning to find out what had become of him; if he was sleeping off a drunken debauch at Peter Mauger's, to give them both a vigorous piece of her mind; if he was not there, to find out where he was; in any case to vent on some one the pent-up feelings of the night.

Vigorous hammering on Peter Mauger's door produced first his old housekeeper, and presently himself, heavy-eyed, dull-witted, and in flagrant dishabille, since Mrs. Guille had but a moment ago shaken him out of the sleep of those who drink not wisely over-night, with the information that a crazy woman wanted him at the door.

"Where's Tom?" demanded Julie, ready to empty the vials of her wrath on the delinquent as soon as he was produced.

But Peter's manner at once dissipated that expectation.

"Tom?" he said vaguely, and gazed at her with a bovine stupidity that jarred her strained nerves like a blow.

"Yes, Tom—my husband, fool! Where is he?" she asked sharply.

"Where is he?" scratching his tousled head to quicken his wits. "I d'n know."

"You don't know? What did you do with him last night, you drunken fool?"—by this time the neighbours had come out to learn the news.

Peter gaped at her in astonishment, his muddled wits and aching head beginning dimly to realize that something was wrong.

"Tom left here ... last night ... t'go home," he nodded emphatically.

"Well, he never got home," snapped Julie. "And you'd best get your clothes on and help me find him. You were both as drunk as pigs, I suppose. If he's lying dead in a ditch it's you that'll have the blame."

"Aw now, Julie!"

"Don't Julie me, you fool! Get dressed and do something."

"I'll come. You wait," and he went inside, and put his head into a basin of water, and threw on his clothes, and came out presently looking anxious and disturbed now that his sluggish brain had begun to work.

"Where you been looking?" he asked.

"Nowhere. I expected to find him here."

"We had a glass or two and then he started off home. He could walk all right.... Did you.... You didn't see anything wrong ... anything ... at the Coupee?" he asked, with a quick anxious look at her.

"No, I didn't. What do you mean? Oh, mon Dieu!" and she started down the road at a run, with Peter lumbering after her and the neighbours in a buzzing tail behind.

The cold douche had cooled Peter's hot head, the running quickened his blood and his thoughts, a sudden grim fear braced his brain to quite unusual activity.

As he ran he recalled the events of the night before; their meeting with Gard and Nance; Tom's scurrilous insults.

If Tom and Gard had met again—Gard would be sure to see Nance home. Had he met Tom on his way back? And if so—if so—and ill had come to Tom—why, Gard might get the blame. And—and—in short, though by zig-zag jerks as he ran—if Gard were out of the way for good and all, Nance's thoughts might turn to one nearer home. He would be sorry if ill had come to Tom, of course. But if Gard could be got rid of he would be most uncommonly glad.

And as he panted after Julie, head down with the burden of much thinking, just before he reached the sunk way to the Coupee, his eye lighted on something in the road that caused him to stop and bend—a button with a scrap of blue cloth attached. He picked it up hastily and put it in his pocket. On a white stone just by it there were some red-brown spots. He pushed it with his foot to the side of the road and was down into the cutting before the heavy-footed neighbours came up.

Julie was ranging up and down the narrow pathway, searching the depths with a face like a hawk, hanging on to the rough sides of the pinnacles, and bending over in a way that elicited warning cries from the others as they came streaming down.