So they came through the other cottages to La Closerie, but the neighbours were all asleep, and those who woke at the sound of her violence, turned over and said, "It's only that mad Frenchwoman in one of her tantrums. Why, in Heaven's name, can't she go to sleep, like other folks?"

Nance went into her own house and quietly closed the door. Julie hammered on it with her fists, as she would dearly have liked to hammer on Nance's face, and then cursed herself off into her own place, slamming the door with such violence as to waken all the fowls and set all the pigs grunting in their sleep.



CHAPTER XXXV

HOW AN ANGEL CAME BRINGING THE TRUTH

Gard's eyes, straining into the dimness of the coming dawn through what seemed to him a most terrible long time, so packed was it with anxious fears, caught at last the white flicker of Nance's signal, and he dropped down just where he stood, among the rough stones of the ridge, with a grateful sigh.

The strain was telling on him. He felt physically weak and worn. Nance's devoted love and courage made his heart beat high, indeed, but his fears on her account strung his laxed cords to breaking point, and then left them looser than before.

He must get away somehow, if only to prevent this constant and terrible risking of her life on his behalf.

He hardly dared to hope that his strategy with the dead man would be of any permanent benefit to him, though there was no knowing. Examination of the body would show that it had been dead for very many years, but his knowledge of the Island superstitions made him doubt if any Sark man would willingly spend a night on L'Etat for a very long time to come.

On the other hand, if the result of their discussions confirmed them in the belief that he was still there, and if, as he constantly feared, they should learn of Nance's comings, and visit upon her the venom they harboured for him, they might so invest the rock that escape would be impossible.

Meagre living, starvation even, he would suffer rather than live more amply at risk of Nance's life, but if the hope of ultimate escape was taken from him then he might as well give in at once and have done with it.

So he lay there, in the broken rocks of the ridge, and looked grimly on life. And the sun rose in a red ball over France, and cleft a shining track across the grey face of the waters, and drew up the mists and thinned away the clouds, till the great plain of the sea and the great dome above were all deep flawless blue, and he saw a thin white curl of smoke rise from the miners' cottages on Sark.

He lay there listless, nerveless, careless of life almost, an Ishmael with every man's hand against him—worse off than Ishmael, he thought, since Ishmael had a desert in which to wander, and he was tied to this bare rock.

But there was Nance! There was always Nance. And at thought of her, his bruised soul found somewhat of comfort and courage once more.

He felt her quivering in his arms again as he pressed her close. He felt again the willing surrender of her sweet wet face. And the thought of it thrilled his cold blood and set it coursing through his veins like new life. Yes, truly, while there was Nance there was hope.

Perhaps the Senechal and the Vicar would prevail upon them. Perhaps they would give it up and leave him alone, and then Nance would find him a boat and they would get across to Guernsey. Perhaps, as she kept insisting, something would happen to discover the truth.

So he lay, while the sun mounted high and baked him on the bare stones, but he did not find it hot.

And then, of a sudden, he stiffened and lay watching anxiously. For there, from out the Creux had come a boat—and another, and another, and another—four boat-loads of them again!

So they were coming, after all, and his hopes died sudden death.

Well—let them come and take him and have their will. He was not the first who had paid the price for what he had not done, and human nature must fall to pieces if hung too long on tenterhooks.

He watched them listlessly. He could crawl into his innermost cavern, of course, and could hold it against them all till the end of time, which in this case would be but a trifling span, for a man must eat to live. But what was the use? As well die quick as slow, since there could be but one end to it. And then, to his very great surprise, the boats crept slowly out of sight round the corner of Coupee Bay, and he lay wondering.

What could be the meaning of that? Why had they put in there? Why couldn't they come on and finish the matter?

The sea was all deserted again. If he had not just happened to catch sight of them stealing across there, he would have felt sure they were not coming to-day.

Perhaps they were going to wait there till night, though why on earth they should wait there instead of at the Creux, was past his comprehension.

And then, after a time, to his amazement, he saw them all go crawling back the way they had come. One, two, three, four—yes, they were all there, and they crept slowly round Laches point and disappeared, and left him gaping.

It was past believing. It was altogether beyond him. He lay, with his eyes glued to the point round which they had gone, stupid with the wonder of it.

They had actually given it up—for to-day, at least, and gone back! He cudgelled his brains for the meaning of it all, till they grew dull and weary with futile thinking.

Perhaps Nance and the Vicar and the Senechal had prevailed after all! Perhaps something had turned up at last to prove to the Sark men their misjudgment! Perhaps—well, any way, it was good to be left alone.

He lay there, laxed with the over-strain of all this upsetting, but rejoicing placidly in this one more day of life.

He felt like one granted a day's respite as he stands on the scaffold with the rope round his neck.

Never had the sun shone so brightly. Never had the silver sea danced so merrily. It might be the last he would see of them.

And the sun wheeled on towards Guernsey, and made his deliberate preparations for a setting beyond the ordinary; for the sun, you must know, takes a very special pride in showing the great cliffs of Sark what he can do in the way of transformation scenes and most transcendent colouring.

And Stephen Gard lay there under the ridge on L'Etat, with the wonder and beauty of it all in his face and in his heart, and said to himself that it was probably the last sunset he would ever see, and he was glad to have seen it at its best.

He had a vague idea that heaven would be something like that—tenderly soft and beautiful, and glowing with radiances of unearthly splendour, which whispered to weary hearts of the peace and joy that lay beyond, and gently called them home to rest.

His theology was, without doubt, of the most elemental and objective, and would not have carried him any great lengths in these days; but, for the time being, at all events, it lifted its possessor to a plane of thought above his usual, and tended to quietness and peace of mind.

The sky right away into the east was glowing softly with the wonders of the sunset, and there the delicate tones changed almost momentarily. As his eye followed the tender grace of their transformations, with a delight which he could neither have expressed nor explained, it once more lighted suddenly upon that which he had been looking for so anxiously all day long, and brought him to earth like a broken bird.

Once more a boat had come round the point of Les Laches, and this time it was speeding towards him as fast as a sail that was as flat almost as a board, and looked to him no more than a thin white cone, could bring it.

So they were coming, after all, and this wonderful sunset might be his last indeed;—and all the tender beauty of the fleecy clouds thinned and paled, and the glory faded as though it had all been but a glorious bubble, and that sharp point of white, speeding across the darkening sea, had pricked it.

But why on earth were they coming now? They had missed the ebb, and it was hours yet to next half-ebb, and they could not hope to land. The white waves were boiling all along the ledges, and the sea for twenty feet out was a surging dapple of foam laced with seething white bubbles. It would be more than any man's life was worth to try and get ashore on L'Etat for many an hour yet.

And there was only one boat! What had become of all the others—of the threatened invasion in force? He sat and watched it in gloomy wonder.

The boat came racing on. As she cleared Breniere her white sail turned to red gold, and the sea below grew purple. There was something white in her bows. He got up heavily, doggedly, forced to it against his will, and walked along the ridge to the eastern point which commanded the landing-place on that side.

There was, without doubt, something white in the bows of the boat, and as he stood gazing at it, it took, to his dazed imagination, the strange form of Nance waving joyful hands to him.

He drew his hands across his eyes. The storm had been sore on them.

The bristling waves of the Race burst in sheets of spray under the glancing bows, but the white spray and the white figure and the pointed white sail were all ablaze in the last rays of the sun, and they all swam before him as if his head was going round.

She came round Quette d'Amont with a fine sweep, like one bound on business of which she had no reason to be ashamed, and dropped her sail and lay in the shelter of the rock.

And the white figure in the bows was truly Nance, and she was standing and waving and calling to him. And the grey-headed man aft was surely Philip Guille, the Senechal, and the faces of the rest were all friendly.

He stumbled hastily down to the lower ledges, but the rush and the roar there drowned their voices.

What were they trying to tell him? What could they want of him?

The Senechal was standing, hands to mouth, waiting his chance. The restless waters below drew back for a moment to gather for a leap, and the big voice came booming across the tumult—

"Jump! We'll pick you up! All is well!"

And Gard, without a moment's hesitation, sprang out into the marbled foam, and struck out for the boat.

They were all friendly hands that gripped him and hauled him over the side, and patted him on the back to get the water out of him—all friendly faces that were turned to him; and the dearest face of all, lighted with a heavenly gladness, was to him as the face of an angel.

"Tell me!" he gasped, still all astream, wits and clothes alike. And it was the Senechal who told him.

"Peter Mauger was killed last night, at the same place as Tom Hamon, and in the same way. So these hot-blooded thickheads are convinced at last that it wasn't your work."

"Peter Mauger!" he said, gazing vaguely at them all. "But who—"

"We haven't found out yet. But even the thickest of the thickheads can't put it down to you"—and the thickheads present grinned in friendly fashion, and they ran up the sail with a will, and turned her nose, and went racing back to the Creux quicker than they had come.

And Gard sat still with his hand in Nance's two, feeling very weak and shaky, and looked vaguely back at L'Etat as it faded and dwindled into a dim black triangle of rock.



CHAPTER XXXVI

HOW HE CAME HOME FROM L'ETAT

This is what had happened.

Since Tom Hamon's death, his friend Peter and his widow Julie had, as we know, found themselves drawn together by a common detestation of Stephen Gard and a common desire for his extinction.

For Peter considered he had been supplanted in Nance's regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor. And Julie considered herself scorned and slighted, though Gard had never considered her save as Tom Hamon's wife.

It was they who had stirred up the Sark men against Gard, and they missed no opportunity of keeping their ill brew on the boil.

Their offensive alliance brought them much together. Peter was often at La Closerie. He was like wax in the hands of the fiery Frenchwoman, and she moulded him to her will. The neighbours might have begun to talk, but that it was obvious to all that the only bond between them at present was their ill-will towards Gard, and in that feeling many shared and found nothing strange in Tom's wife and Tom's chief friend joining hands to make some one pay for his death.

In time, if it had gone on, the neighbours would doubtless have had plenty to say on the subject, for old wives' tongues rattled fast of a winter's evening, when they all gathered in this house or that, and sat on the sides of the green bed with their feet in the dry fern inside, and the oil crasset hanging down in the midst, and plied their needles and their tongues and wits all at once, and wrought scandalously good guernseys and stockings in spite of it all.

But these were summer evenings yet, and the veilles had not begun, and reputations were out at grass till the time came round for their inspection and judgment.

And so, when Peter Mauger never reached home the night before this day of which we are telling, his old housekeeper, whatever she thought about it at the time, only said afterwards that she supposed he had stopped somewhere and would turn up all right in the morning, though she admitted that he was not in the habit of staying out of a night. Anyway, she was an old woman and all alone, and she was not going out to look for him at that time of night.

The morning surprised her by his continued absence. Never in his life, so far as she knew, had he behaved like this before. Vituperation of him gave place to anxiety about him.

She questioned the neighbours. All they knew was that he had been seen going down to Little Sark soon after sunset.

"That black Frenchwoman of Tom Hamon's twists him round her finger," said one.

"You tie him up, Mrs. Guille," chuckled another, "or sure as beans she'll steal him from you and leave you in the cold."

And then, who should they see coming striding along the road but Madame Julie herself, and evidently in a hurry;—in a state of red-hot excitement, too, as she drew near. And they waited, hands on hips, to hear what she was up to now.

"Where's Peter?" she demanded, a long way in advance. "Tell him I want him. That man Gard is still on L'Etat, though those fools who went across for him couldn't find him. Cre nom! What are you all staring at, then?"

"Where's our Peter?" demanded Mrs. Guille shrilly, with the strident note of fear in her voice, as she becked and bobbed towards the Frenchwoman like an aged cormorant.

"Peter? I'm asking you. I want him. Where is he?"

"He went to Little Sark last night, and he's never come home."

"Never come home? Why, what's taken him? If he'd been with me last night he'd have seen something! That Nance Hamon swam across to the rock with nothing on but her shift to take food to Gard, and I caught her at it—the shameless hussy!"

"Maybe Peter's heard of it an' gone across with 'em again," suggested one. "He was terrible hot against Gard."

"And reason he had to be hot against him," cried Julie. "Who'll find out for me where he's got to, and when they're going out after Gard? I would go too and see the end of him."

A couple of burly husbands came rolling round the corner towards their breakfasts and caught her words.

"Doubt you'll have to go alone, mistress," said one, phlegmatically. "There's ghosts on L'Etat, they do say, though sure the one John Drillot brought across was dead enough."

"If he's there," said the other, plumbing Julie's feelings, "he's safe as a pig in a pen."

"Where's our Peter?" demanded Mrs. Guille.

"Peter? I d'n know. What's come of him?" and they stared blankly at her.

"He went to Little Sark last night to see her"—with a beck of distaste towards Julie—"and he's never come home."

The men looked from the speaker to Julie, as though the next word necessarily lay with her.

"I never set eyes on him. I was out after that girl. I came here to tell him about Gard. Has he been to the harbour?"

"No, he hasn't. We are from there now."

"He's maybe with some of them arranging about going to L'Etat," said Julie. "I'll go and find out;" and she set off along the road past the windmill.

The morning passed in fruitless enquiries. She asked this one and that, every one she could think of, if they had seen Peter, and was met everywhere with meaning grins and point-blank denials. Apparently no one had set eyes on Peter, and every one seemed to imply that she ought io know more about him than any one else.

It was past mid-day before she was back at Vauroque, but Mrs. Guilie was still standing in the doorway of Peter's empty house as if she had been looking out for news of him ever since.

"Eh b'en? Have you found him?" she cried.

"Not a finger of him!" snapped Julie savagely, tired out with her fruitless labours.

"Then he's come to some ill, ba su. And if he has—ma fe, it's you!—it's you!" The old lady's scream of denunciation choked itself with its own excess, and the neighbours came running out to learn the news.

Stolid minds travel in grooves, and old Mrs. Guille's had been groping along possibilities of all kinds, clinging at the same time to the hope that Peter would still turn up all right.

Now that her hope was shattered her mind dropped naturally into a grim groove, along which it had taken a tentative trip during the morning and had recoiled from with a shudder.

The last time Mrs. Tom Hamon had come seeking a man who was missing, that man had been found under the Coupee, and so old Mrs. Guille set oft for the Coupee as fast as her old legs and her want of breath and general agitation would let her.

"Nom de Dieu! What—?" began Julie, with twisted black brows, and then drifted on with the rest in Mrs. Guille's wake—all except one or two housewives whose men were due for dinner, and knew they must be fed whatever had come to Peter Mauger.

"Gaderabotin!" said one of these as he came up, and stood scratching his head and gazing down the road after them. "What's taken them all?"

"Think because they found Tom Hamon there, they'll find Peter too," guffawed another, and they rolled on into their homes, chuckling at the simplicity of women and children.

Arrived at the Coupee, the little mob of sensation-seekers peered fearfully about. One small boy, cleverer or more groovy-minded than the rest, struck off along the headland to the left. It was from there Charles Guille had seen Tom Hamon. Perhaps from there he would see something, too.

And no sooner was he there, where he could see to the foot of the cliffs in Coupee Bay, than he commenced to dance and wave his arms like a mad thing, because the words he wanted to shout choked him tight so that he could hardly breathe.

They streamed out along the cliff and huddled there, struck chill with fright in spite of the blazing sun.

For there, under the cliff, in the same spot as they found Tom Hamon, lay another dark, huddled figure, and they knew it must be Peter.

The finding of Tom had filled them with anger against Gard. The finding of Peter filled them with fear.

Gard had sufficed as explanation and scapegoat for Tom's death, and as vent for their feelings. But what of Peter's?

It had not been Gard, then? And if not Gard, who?

For, whoever it was, he was still at large, and any of them might be the next.

There were new terrors in the eyes that gazed so wildly on the narrow white path and the towering pinnacles of the Coupee. They had been familiar with it all, all their lives, but suddenly it had become strange to them.

If grisly Death, all bones and scythe, had come stalking along it before their eyes at that moment, they would have shrieked, no doubt, and fallen flat, but he would have no more than answered to their feelings and fulfilled their expectations.

As it was, when the Seigneur's big white stallion stuck his head over the green dyke behind them, and gave a shrill neigh at the unexpected sight of so many people in a field which was usually occupied only by Charles Guille's two mild-eyed cows and their calves, the women screamed and the children lied.

"Man doux! but I thought it was the devil himself," said old Mrs. Guille. "Oui-gia!" and shook an angry fist at him.

But the discoverer of the body was already away along the road to Vauroque, covering the ground like a little incarnation of ill-news.

The exertion of running cleared away the choking, if it took his breath. He shouted as he drew near the houses.

"Ah, bah!" growled one of the diners inside. "What's to do now, then?"

"He's there ... Peter ... under Coupee ... Where Tom Hamon...." panted the news-bearer as he tore past to his own home. And the rest of Vauroque emptied itself into the road and stood looking along it, as the stragglers came up, white-faced and wild-eyed.

"He's there," confirmed one woman, twisting up her loosened hair. "And just same place where Tom Hamon lay."

"'Tweren't Gard killed him, then," said one of the diners, chewing over that thought with his last mouthful.

"Nor Tom neither, then, maybe," said another.

"We've bin on wrong tack, then;" and they went off round the corner at a speed their build would hardly have credited them with.

One to the Senechal and one to the Doctor, and then to the Creux, both telling the news as they went. So that when the officials came hurrying through the tunnel the greater part of the Island was waiting for them on the shingle, except those who preferred the wider view from the cliff above.

Some of the men had been for pulling across at once, but they were overborne.

"Doctor said he'd like to have seen him afore he was moved last time," said old John de Carteret weightily, and would not let a boat go out till the Doctor and the Senechal came.

It was all waiting for them the moment they arrived, however, and they stepped in and swung away round Les Laches, and three other boats followed them so closely that it looked almost like a gruesome race who should get there first.

There was little talking in any of the boats, but there was some solid hard thinking, in a mazed kind of way.

Until they knew more of the facts, indeed, they scarce knew what to think yet. But more than one of them remembered disturbedly how they had gone in force two days before to fetch Gard off his lonely rock, or to make an end of him there; and here they were going in force on a very different errand—an errand which, they could not help seeing, would bring him off his rock in a very different way, if this present matter was what it looked as if it might be.

And the Doctor was not long in giving them the facts, when they had run up on to the shingle, and then crunched through it to the place where Peter's body lay under the steep black cliff—in the exact spot where Tom Hamon's had lain just eighteen days before.

But that it was undoubtedly Peter's face and body, those who had come after Tom the last time might have thought they were going through their previous experience over again. It was all so like.

They all stood round in a dark, silent group while the Doctor carefully examined the body, and the Senechal looked on with stern and troubled face.

"It is most extraordinary," said the Doctor, straightening up from his task at last, and his face, too, was knitted with perplexity, but had something else in it besides. "This man has been done to death in exactly the same way as Hamon"—a rustle of surprise shook the group of silent onlookers. "The head has been beaten in just as Hamon's was—with some blunt rounded tool, I should say. These other wounds and contusions are the results of his fall down the cliff. He has been dead at least eight hours. Lift him carefully, men. We can do nothing more here—unless by chance the one who did it flung his weapon after him, and we could find it."

They scattered, and searched the whole dark bay minutely, but found nothing. Then with rough gentleness they bore the body to the boat and laid it under the thwarts.

"Men!" said the Senechal weightily, as they were just about to climb back into their boats. "This matter brings another matter home to all our hearts. You have been persecuting another man under the belief that he killed Tom Hamon. From what some of us knew of Mr. Gard, we were certain he could have had no hand in it. This, I take it, proves it?" He looked at the Doctor.

"Undoubtedly!" nodded the Doctor. "The man who killed this one killed the other, and that man could not be Stephen Gard, for he is on L'Etat."

"It's God's mercy that you haven't Mr. Gard's blood on your heads. Some of you, I know, have done your best that way. Suppose you had killed him that other night—what would you have felt as you stood here to-day? Take that thought home with you, and may God keep you from like misjudgment in the future!"

And they had not a word to say for themselves, but crawled silently aboard, and in silence pulled back to Creux Harbour.

Once only old John de Carteret spoke to the Senechal, soon after they had started.

"One of them"—nodding over at the boats behind—"could go to the rock and bring him off," he suggested.

"I thought of that, but there's one I want to go with me. She'll be down at the Creux, I expect, and we'll go as soon as we've disposed of this."

There was a very different feeling visible in the silent crowd that awaited them at the harbour this time from that manifested on the last occasion, Then, it was a sympathetic anger that united them all in a common feeling against the perpetrator of the deed. Now—even before the whisper had run round that Peter Mauger had been done to death in the same way as Tom Hamon—fear was among them, and doubt. Fear of they knew not exactly what, and doubt of they knew not whom.

But here were two men done to death in their midst, and the man on whom all their suspicions had settled in the first case could not possibly have had anything to do with the second, and so had most likely had nothing to do with either—in which case the man who had was still at large among them, and no man's life was safe, much less any woman's or child's.

Their thoughts did not run, perhaps, quite so clearly as that, but that was the result of it all, and their faces showed it. Furthermore, every man and woman there began at once to cast about in his and her mind for the possible murderer, and men looked at the neighbours whom they had known all their lives, with lurking suspicions in their eyes and the consideration of strange possibilities in their minds.

Tom Hamon's death had bound them closer together; Peter Mauger's set them all apart. The strange dead man up in the school-house added to their discomfort.

It was not until the hastily-constructed litter with its gruesome burden had been sent off to the Boys' School, in charge of the constables and the Doctor, that the Senechal caught sight of Nance's eager white face and anxious eyes, in the crowd that lingered still in answer to another whisper that had flown round.

If they were at once pig-headed and hot-blooded and suspicious, they were also warm-hearted and willing to atone for a mistake—once they were sure of it.

No crowd followed Peter on his last journey but one, though the whole Island had swarmed after Tom Hamon.

They wanted to see the man who would have been killed for killing Tom, though he didn't do it, but for—circumstances, and his own pluck and endurance.

And when the Senechal beckoned to one of the circumstances, and put his hand on her slim shoulder, and said—

"We are going for him. I thought you would like to come too," her face went rosy with gratitude, and the brave little hands clasped up on to her breast, as she murmured—

"Oh, M. le Senechal!" and choked at anything more.

Those nearest gave her rough words of encouragement.

"Cheer up, Nance! You'll soon have him back!"

"That's a brave garche! Don't cry about it now!"

"We'll make it up to him, lass. We'll all come and dance at the wedding"—and so on.

But the Senechal patted her on the shoulder and asked—

"And where is your brother? He should come, too. I hear you have both been in this matter."

"Ah, monsieur!" she said, with brimming eyes and a pathetic little lift and fall of the hand, which expressed far more than she could put into words. "We fear ... we fear he is drowned. He swam out to the rock taking food, and ... and ... we have not seen him since;" and her hand was over her face and the tears streaming through.

"Mon Dieu! Another!" said the Senechal, aghast. "When, child? When was this?"

"The night after the storm, monsieur."

"Perhaps he is there, on the rock."

"No, monsieur. I was over there myself last night. He never got there, and we fear he must be drowned."

"You were over there, child? Why, how did you get across?"

"I swam, monsieur;" and he stared at her in amazement.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! You make up for some of the others," he said bluntly. "Come then, and we will make sure of this one, anyhow;" and he led the way to John de Carteret's boat, and all the people gave them a cheer as they pulled out of the harbour to catch the breeze off the Laches.

Then the crowd waited for their return, and talked by snatches of all these strange happenings, and discussed and discounted the chances of Bernel's being still alive.

"For, see you, the Race! And that was the first night after the storm, and it would be running like the deuce, bidemme!" "It's best not to know how to swim if it leads you to do things like that, oui-gia!" "When a man's time comes, he cuts his cleft in the water, whether he can swim or not, crais b'en!" "And that slip of a Nance had been over there last night—par made, some folks have the courage!" "All the same, it was madness—"

But behind all the broken chatter, in every mind was the grim question, "Who is it, then, that is doing these things amongst us?" And there was a feeling of mighty discomfort abroad.

All the same, they cheered vigorously as the boat came speeding back, and they saw Gard sitting between Nance and the Senechal, and crowded round as it ran up the shingle, and would have lifted him out and carried him shoulder-high through the tunnel and up the road, if he would have had it.

They saw how his imprisonment on the rock—"Ma fe, think of it!—all through that storm, too!"—had told upon him. His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes sunken, and he looked very weary—"and, man doux, no wonder, after eighteen days on L'Etat!"—though their friendly shouts had put a touch of colour in his face and a spark in his eyes for the moment.

"Now, away home, all of you!" ordered the Senechal. "We've all had enough to think about for one day. To-morrow we will see what is to be done."

"Too much!" croaked one old crone, who had something of a reputation among her neighbours. "What I want to know is—who killed Peter Mauger?"

And that was the question that occupied most minds in Sark that night.



CHAPTER XXXVII

HOW THEY LAID TRAPS FOR THE DEVIL

The Doctor insisted on taking care of Gard. He took him into his own house at Dixcart, and began at once a course of treatment based on common-sense and the then most scientific attainment, and calculated to repair the waste of the Rock and build him up anew in the shortest time compatible with an efficient and permanent cure.

Even when Gard felt quite himself again and would have returned to his work, the genial autocrat would not hear of it.

"Just you stop here, my boy," he ordered. "An experience such as you have had needs some getting over. You can stand a good rest and some fattening up, and those —— mines must wait."

Meanwhile, the Island was in a smoulder of suspicion and superstition.

No one had yet ventured openly to point the finger at any reasonably possible doer of deeds so dark. Behind carefully closed doors of a night, indeed, here and there a whisper suggested that the Frenchwoman might be at the bottom of it all. But the mistake that had already been made, and the consequences that came so terribly near to completing it beyond repair, made them all cautious of open speech or action.

Gard's story explained the mystery of the dead stranger and relieved the public mind to that extent.

The Senechal was disposed to agree with his views on the matter.

"I never heard of those caves on L'Etat," he said musingly, as they sat over their pipes one night; "and I'm sure no one else knew of them. But there was much free-trading round here in the old times, and I've no doubt many a Customs man disappeared and was never heard of again, just like this one. All the Islands felt very sore about the new regulations, and our people stick at nothing when their blood is up."

"They do not," said Gard feelingly.

"I'd like to get into that inner cave," said the Doctor longingly.

"You couldn't," said Gard, looking at his size and girth. "It's a mighty tight squeeze under the slab, and that tunnel would beat you. Unless you've been brought up to that kind of thing, you couldn't stand it. It would give you nightmares for the rest of your life."

"That's a rare lass, that little Nance," said the Senechal. "There's some good in Sark after all, Mr. Gard."

"She was an angel to me," said Gard with feeling. "If it had not been for her, I could never have held out. Not for what she brought me, but the fact that she came. But it was terrible to me to think of her coming through that Race. I begged her not to, but she would have her way. Three times she risked her life for me—"

"Three times!" said the Senechal. "Ma fe, but she's a garche to be proud of!"

"Ay, and to be more than proud of," said Gard. "She has given me my life, and I will give it all to making her happy."

"I wouldn't swim across to L'Etat for any woman in the world," said the Doctor. "Because, in the first place, I couldn't. She must have nerves of steel, to say nothing of muscles. In the dark, too! And you wouldn't think it to look at her."

"It needed more than nerves or muscles," said Gard quietly.

Not a man among the Islanders—much less a woman—would go anywhere near the Coupee after dark. Even Nance confessed to a preference for daylight passages. And Gard, when he went down into Little Sark for a walk, as part of his cure, could not repress a cold shiver whenever he passed the fatal spot where two men had gone over to their deaths.

All the old wives' tales were dug up and passed along, growing as they went. Little eyes and mouths grew permanently rounded with horrors, and the ground was thoroughly well spaded and planted with sturdy shoots warranted to yield a noisome harvest of superstition for generations to come.

The occupants of Clos Bourel and Plaisance carefully locked their doors of a night now.

Old Mrs. Carre at Plaisance vowed she had heard the White Horses go past, on the nights before Tom Hamon and Peter were found. And every one knew that when the ghostly horses were heard, some one was going to die. But as she had said nothing about it before, her contribution to the general uneasiness was received with respect before her face but with open doubt behind her back.

Old Nikki Never-mind-his-name—lest his descendants, if he had any, take umbrage at the matter—swore that he had not only seen the ghostly steed pass Vauroque in the dead of night, but that it bore a rider whose head was carried carefully in his right hand. Unfortunately, the headless one passed so quickly that Nikki said he could not distinguish his features—having looked for them first in the wrong place—and so he could not say for certain who the next to die would be; but from the knowing wag of his head the neighbours were of opinion that he knew more than he chose to tell, and he gained quite a reputation thereby.

But, even here again, doubts were cast upon the matter by some, especially those who were acquainted with the old gentleman's proclivities towards raw spirits of the material kind that paid the lightest of duties in Guernsey.

All these and very many similar matters were discussed by the Doctor—who disturbed their minds with horrific accounts of homicidal mania taking possession of apparently innocent souls—and the Senechal and the Vicar and Stephen Gard, as they sat over their pipes of an evening in the Doctor's house. But chiefly the great and troublesome question of "Who?"

They were all of one mind that the matter must be looked into. The feeling that a danger was loose in the Island, and might at any moment fall upon any man, woman, or child, was past endurance. The suspicion that It might be any one of those they met every day was insufferable.

The only difficulty was to decide how to look into it—what to do, and how.

Each day they feared to hear of some new outrage. But until the perpetrator was discovered they could do nothing towards his suppression. And, on the other hand, it looked as though they could do nothing towards his discovery until he perpetrated some new outrage.

It was Gard who suggested they should watch the Coupee every night, armed, and unknown to any but themselves.

And, after much discussion, following out his idea, he and the Senechal and the Doctor, who could bowl over a rabbit as well as any of them, lay in the heather, on the common above the cutting on the Little Sark side, for many nights, guns in hand, and eyes and ears on the strain, but saw and heard nothing.

One night, indeed, when there was a high wind, the Doctor's marrow crawled in his backbone at the sound of groanings and moanings and most dolorous cries for help, coming up out of black Coupee Bay, where they had picked up Tom Hamon's and Peter Mauger's dead bodies.

He sweated cold terrors, for he was on the east headland right above the bay, till the Senechal crawled over to him and whispered—

"Hear 'em?"

"Y-y-yes. What the d-d-deuce and all—"

"Knew you'd wonder what it was—"

"W-w-wonder?" chittered the Doctor.

"It's only the wind in the cave at the corner below here—"

"Ah! Thought it must be something of that kind," said the Doctor through his teeth, clenched hard to keep them in order. "Don't wonder folks fight shy of the Coupee. Sounded uncommonly like spirits. Might give some folks the jumps."

On another dark and windy night it was the Senechal's turn to get something of a fright.

As he lay in the heather, gun in hand, and well wrapped up in his big cloak, with all his faculties concentrated on the wavering pathway below, it seemed to him that he heard slow heavy footsteps approaching.

His nerves were strung tight. He craned his head to look down into the cutting, when suddenly there came a wild snuffle at the back of his neck, and as he jumped up with a startled yelp, one part anger and nine parts fright, a horse that had grazed down upon him in the darkness, leaped back with a snort and a squeal and disappeared into the night.

"Ga'rabotin! but I thought it was the devil himself," said the Senechal, as the others came hurrying up. "Why the deuce can't people tie up their horses as they do their cows? I'll bring it up at the next Chef Plaids"—which consideration restored his shaken equanimity somewhat, and made him feel himself again.

Nothing more came of all their watching, and over a jorum of something hot one night, after they had returned to the Doctor's house, it was himself who said—

"After all, it stands to reason. Some evil-possessed soul seeks victims, and has fixed on the Coupee as the place best fitted for his work. No one now goes near the Coupee at night—ergo, no victims; ergo, no—er—no manifestations."

"H'm! Very clever!" said the Senechal, through his pipe. "Where does that leave us, then?"

"We must have a decoy, of course."

"H'm! You'll not get any Sark man to act as decoy to the devil. Besides, they would talk, and that would upset the whole thing."

"What about one of your men, Gard?"

"It's a dangerous game for any man to play, Doctor.... I don't quite see how one could ask it of them,"—and after a pause of concentrated thought and many slow smoke-puffs—"What would you say to me?" and all their eyes settled on him—the Doctor's professionally.

"Surely you have suffered enough in this matter, Mr. Gard," suggested the Vicar.

"I would give a good deal, and do a good deal, to get to the bottom of it all. Things will never settle down properly till this matter is disposed of."

That, of course, was obvious to them all, but all had the same feeling that he had already suffered enough in the matter.

But consideration of the Doctor's suggestion in all its aspects only served to convince them that, if any such scheme was to be carried out, it could only be done among themselves, and its dangers were obvious.

It was not a matter to be lightly undertaken by any man. For whoever undertook the role of decoy, undoubtedly took his life in his hands; and they spent many evenings over it.

The Vicar was absolutely against the idea, but had no alternative to suggest.

"It is simply playing with death," said he, "and no man has a right to do that."

"It means a good deal for the Island if we can clear it up," said the Senechal.

But, by degrees, they got to discussion of how it might be done, and from that to the actual doing was only a heroic step.

The decoy's head must be well padded, of course, for the heads of both victims had been the points of attack.

He must be well armed also, and being forewarned and more, he ought to be able to give a certain account of himself.

And then the Doctor and the Senechal would be close at hand and on the keen look-out for emergencies.

The Doctor undertook to pad his head with something in the nature of a turban under his hat, which, he vowed, would resist the impact of iron blows better than metal itself.

"Leave my ears loose, anyway," said Gard. "I'd like at all events to be able to hear it coming."

The Senechal had a weapon, part pistol and the rest blunderbuss, which had belonged to his father, who had always referred to it affectionately as his "dunderbush." It had seen strange doings in its time, but had been so long retired from the active list, that he undertook to load and fire it himself before he said any more about it.

And he did it next day, with a full charge, in his meadow, with the assistance of a gate-post and a long cord, and reported it at night as in excellent order, and calculated to blow into smithereens anything blowable that stood up before it within the short limit of its range.

At this stage in its proceedings the Vicar reluctantly retired from the Committee of Public Safety. He acknowledged the sore need of ending the suspicious and superstitious fears which were beginning to affect the life of the community in various ways. But he could not see his way to any participation in means so dangerous to the life of one of their number as those suggested.

He did his best to dissuade Gard from it. He even reminded him of the duty he owed to Nance. She had undoubtedly saved his life, and she had a premier claim upon his consideration—and so on.

To all of which Gard fully assented.

"But," he said gravely, "we are at a deadlock in this other matter, and it is just barely possible that this plan may clear it all up. I can't say I'm very sanguine that it will. On the other hand, I really don't see that any great harm can come to me. The others probably suffered because they were taken unawares. I shall go in the hope of meeting it, and shall be ready for it. Unless, Vicar, you really think it is the devil or something of that sort?"

"I don't know what to think," said the Vicar solemnly. "I cannot bring myself to believe any of our Sark men would do such dreadful things. I look at each man I meet and say to myself, 'Now, can it be possible it is you?—or you?—or you?'—and it does not seem possible; and yet—"

"And yet some one did it, Vicar," said the Doctor, brusquely, "and that's just the trouble. Until we find out who did it, any man may have done it, and we all look at everybody else, just as you do, and say to ourselves, 'Is it you?—or you?—or you?' Though I'm bound to say I've not got the length yet of doubting either you or the Senechal, or Gard, and I don't think it's myself. It might quite conceivably be any one of us, however, prowling about in our sleep and utterly unconscious afterwards of evil-doing."

"A most awful possibility," said the Vicar. "God grant it may turn out differently from that."

"You never know what this inexplicable machine may do," said the Doctor, tapping his head. "However, we'll hope for the best, and I think the Senechal and I ought to be able to see Gard through without any very disastrous results. If we succeed, he will deserve better of this Island than any man I know—and a sight more than this Island deserves of him. I quite understand," he said, as Gard looked quickly up. "And it does you credit, my boy; but there are not very many men would do it."

"Well, I'm afraid I must leave you to it," said the Vicar, and did so.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

HOW THEY LAID THE DEVIL BY THE HEELS

When it began to be noised abroad that Gard was going to and fro across the Coupee, even by night, as if nothing had ever happened there, the Sark men shrugged their shoulders and said, "Pardie!—sooner him than me—oui-gia!"

It was obviously necessary, however, that this should be known. Even the cormorant does not fish where fish are never found.

But when he went to and fro by night, he went mailed—according to the Doctor's ideas—and armed—according to the Senechal's; and each night the Doctor and the Senechal went quietly down, some time in advance, and lay hidden on the headlands with their guns, and never took their eyes off him and all his surroundings, while he was in sight.

And Gard, in nearing the Little Sark cutting, always kept carefully to the right-hand side of the path, though it was somewhat crumbly there and had fallen away down the slope towards Grande Greve. For he had gone cautiously over the ground beforehand, and decided that if there was any possibility of being knocked overboard unawares, he would prefer to go over the much gentler slope on the right, where one might even at a pinch find lodgment among the rubble and bushes, than over the sheer fall into Coupee Bay, where you could drop a stone almost to the shingle below.

Nance knew nothing whatever of the matter, or she would undoubtedly and most reasonably have had something to say about it. But knowledge of it could only upset her, and so perhaps himself, and he had carefully kept it from her. Little Sark, moreover, was more isolated than ever by reason of the Coupee mystery, and word of his goings and comings—save such as had La Closerie for their object in the day-time—never reached her.

They were in grievous sorrow down there over Bernel. Gard still preached hope, but each day's delay in its realisation seemed to them to make it the more unlikely, and their hearts were very sore.

Julie had gone about her work for days after Gard's return like a bereft tigress. Then one morning she locked the door of her house, put the key in her pocket, and took the cutter for Guernsey; and none regretted her going.

And, as it turned out, though that had not been her intention at the time, it was the last Sark was to see of her. Rumours reached them later of her marriage to a fellow-countryman, with whom she had gone to France. The one thing they knew for certain was that she never came back to La Closerie, and after due interval, and consequent on other matters, they broke open the door and resumed possession of the house.

Night after night Gard slowly crossed the Coupee, lingered in its shadows, went on into Little Sark, and came lingering back.

And night after night the Doctor and the Senechal lay in the heather of the headlands, guns in hand, waiting for something that never came, and then going stiffly home to one or other of their houses, to lubricate their joints and console their disappointment with hot punch and much tobacco.

"I'm afraid it's no go," was the Doctor's grudging verdict at last, on the fourteenth blank night.

"Let's keep on," said Gard. "Things generally happen just when you don't expect them."

"That's so," grunted the Senechal. And they decided to keep on.

Fortunately, the nights were warm and mostly fine. When neither moon nor stars afforded him light enough for a safe crossing, he took a lantern, so that no one who desired to knock him on the head need miss the chance for lack of seeing him.

And when, after their lonely waiting, the watchers in the heather saw the lantern come joggling down the steep cutting from Sark, they braced themselves for eventualities, and hefted their guns, and pricked up their ears and made ready.

And when it had wavered slowly along the path between the great pits of darkness on either hand, and had gone joggling on into Little Sark, they sank back into their formes with each his own particular exclamation, and lay waiting till the light came back.

Times of tension and endurance which told upon them all, but bore most heavily on Gard, since the onslaught, when it came, must fall upon him, and the absolute ignorance as to how and when and whence it might come, kept every nerve within him strung like a fiddle-string.

It was the eeriest experience he had ever had, that nightly trip across the Coupee;—bad enough when moon or stars afforded him vague and distorted glimpses of his ghostly surroundings:—ten times worse when the flicker of his lantern barely kept him to the path, and the broken gleams ran over the rugged edges and tumbled into the black gulfs at the sides;—when every starting shadow might be a murderer leaping out upon him, every foot of the walling darkness the murderer's cover, and every step he took a step towards death.

A trip, I assure you, that not many men would have been capable of. For it did not by any means end with the Coupee. When he got to bed of a night, and fell asleep at last, he was still crossing the Coupee with his joggling lantern all night long, and suffered things in dreams compared with which even his actual experiences were but holiday jaunts.

And at times these grisly imaginings came back upon him as he actually walked the narrow path next night, and it was all he could do to keep his head and not fling the lantern into the depths of the pit and follow it.

They were all getting exceedingly weary of the whole business; indeed, it was getting on all their nerves in a way which threatened consequences, when, mercifully, the end came—suddenly, not at all as they had looked for it, quite outside all their expectation.

It was one of the shrouded nights. The Doctor and the Senechal, flat in the heather, saw the lantern issue from the Sark cutting and come joggling towards them. They heard a snort of surprise behind them, but gave it no special heed. The Senechal grinned briefly at remembrance of his fright when the beast snuffled down his neck that other night.

Then, this is what happened.

Gard—his lantern in his left hand, and the Senechal's father's "dunderbush" in his right—his eyes pinching spooks out of every inch of the black wall about him, and every string at its tightest—had reached the crumbly bit of path near the Little Sark side, when, like a clap of thunder out of a blue sky, the black silence of the cutting vomited uproar—the wild clang and beat of what sounded, in that hollow space, like the trampling of a thousand dancing hoofs—shrill neighings and whinnyings and screamings, all blended into an indescribable and blood-curdling clamour that gashed the night like an outrage.

And then, before even he had time to wonder, the great white stallion was upon him—dancing on its hind legs on that narrow path like an acrobat, towering above him to twice his own height, striking savagely down at him with its great front feet, screaming like a fiend.

He had no time to think. His left arm and the lantern went up with the natural instinct of defence. Just one glimpse he got—and never forgot it—of vicious white eyes and teeth, flapping red nostrils, wild-flying hair, and huge pawing feet descending on him, with the dirty white hair splaying out all round them as they came down. Then his right hand went up also, and he fired full into all these things. The lantern and the blunderbuss went spinning into the gulf, the great feet beat him to the ground, and rose and jabbed down at him with all the vicious might that lay behind them—the savage white muzzle shrilling its blood-curdling screams of triumph all the while—and all this in the space of a second. "Good God!" cried the Doctor, craning over the eastern bank of the cutting, but fearful of firing into the turmoil lest he should hit Gard, so dropped himself bodily over on to the path.

Then the Senechal's Sark eyes saw the great white head, with its flying veil of hair, as it towered up for another vicious jab at the fallen man, and he emptied both barrels of his gun into it.

A wild scream that shrilled along the night and woke Plaisance and Clos Bourel and Vauroque, and the great white devil reared to his fullest with wildly beating forefeet, toppled over backwards, and disappeared with one hideous thud and a final crash on the shingle of Coupee Bay.

It was worse than they had ever dreamed—as bad almost as some of Gard's own nightmares.

"Good God! Good God! Good God!" babbled the Doctor, as he groped in the dark for what might be left of their unfortunate decoy.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" gasped the Senechal, with catching breath and shaking legs, as he ran round to join him in the search.

But there was no sign of Gard.

"Run, man!—Plaisance—a light!" jerked the Senechal.

"I can't see," groaned the Doctor.

"I'll go!" and he set off at the best pace his years and his shaking legs could compass.

Plaisance was standing at its doors, trembling still at that fearsome cry, and wondering if it was, perchance, the last trump.

At sight of the panting figure coming up from the Coupee, it scuttled and banged the doors tight. "Open! Open, you fools!" cried the Senechal, and flung himself against the first door, while those inside, under the sure belief that they were keeping out the devil, heaped themselves against it to prevent him.

"Dolts! Idiots! Fools!" he cried. "It's me—the Senechal. I want your help!" and at that a man peeped out from the next door to make sure this was not just another wile of the devil.

"A lantern! Quick!" ordered the Senechal. "And a blanket and a rope—and get ready a bed for a wounded man. Come you with me and help!"

"Mais, mon Gyu——!" began the man.

"We've killed the devil, and the Doctor's down there with him——"

"But we don't want him here, M. le Senechal," quavered a woman's voice, in terror.

"Fools! It's Mr. Gard that is hurt. The devil's down in Coupee Bay, and we've killed him for you."

"Ah then, Gyu marchi! Here's a blanket—and the lantern—rope's in barn. You get a bed ready," to the woman, and they went off towards the Coupee.

And mighty glad the Doctor was to see them coming. He had begun to fear the Senechal had lost his head and made a bolt for home.

He had been sitting under the bank of the cutting as the surest way of keeping out of one or other of the black gulfs. But the interval had given him time to recover himself, and he jumped up at once, all ready for business, and hailed them.

"Down this side, I think," he said, and they swung the lantern over the Grande Greve slope below the bit of crumbly pathway.

"Le velas!" said Thomas Carre, and handed the lantern to the Senechal, and let himself heavily over the side, and groped his way down to the motionless form among the bramble bushes.

"Pardie, he is dead, I do think!" as he bent over it.

"Let's see!" said the Doctor's quick voice at his elbow. "Hand down the light;" and the Senechal waited above in grievous anxiety.

"Not dead," said the Doctor at last. "Stunned and badly knocked about. He'll come round. Now, how are we to get him up?"

"Here's a blanket—and a rope."

"Good! The blanket!... So!... Now—gently, my man!... Got it, Senechal? Right! Ease him down on to the path. That's right! Give me a hand, will you? My legs aren't as limber as they used to be. Now we'll get him on to a bed and see what the damage is;" and they set off slowly for Plaisance.

"My God, Senechal! That passed belief! To think of our never thinking of that infernal brute!" said the Doctor, as they stumbled slowly along in the joggling light.

"He was possessed of the devil, without a doubt. That last scream of his when he got my two bullets—"

"'T woke us," said Carre. "And we wondered what was up. What was it, then, monsieur?"

"That devil of a white stallion of Le Pelley's. It was him killed Tom Hamon and Peter Mauger, and he tried to kill Mr. Gard. We've been on this job for weeks past, while you were all sleeping in your beds."

"Mon Gyu! and we none of us knew anything about it till we heard yon scream! And he's dead——"

"He's dead—unless he's the devil," said the Senechal sententiously.



CHAPTER XXXIX

HOW THEY THANKED GOD FOR HIS MERCIES

Vast was the wonder of the Sark folk when they heard next day of that night's doings, and learned who the murderer of the Coupee was, and how and by whom he had been laid by the heels.

The whole Island breathed freely once more, and was outspokenly grateful to the courage and pertinacity which had lifted from it the cloud and the reproach.

Some of them even had the grace to be not a little ashamed of their previous doings, but ascribed the greater part of the blame to Tom's widow and Peter Mauger.

But it was days before Stephen Gard took any interest in the matter, past or present, or in anything whatsoever.

The Doctor's pad undoubtedly saved his life, but no amount of padding could avert entirely the fiendish malignity of those merciless iron flails.

He lay unconscious for eight-and-forty hours; and the Doctor—though he never breathed a word of it, and prophesied complete recovery with the utmost cheerfulness and apparent sincerity—had his own grim fears as to what the effect of the whole hideous event might be on one who had already suffered such undue strain of mind and body.

Fortunately, his fears proved groundless. On the third day, Gard quietly opened his eyes on Nance, who had barely left his bedside since the Senechal went down to La Closerie himself and brought her back with him to Plaisance.

"I've been asleep," he said drowsily. "Anything wrong, Nance dear?" and he tried to sit up, but found his head heavy with cold water bandages, and a pain about his neck and left shoulder, and his left arm in splints, and all the rest of him one great aching bruise.

"Why—" he murmured, in vast surprise.

"You're to lie quite still," said Nance dictatorially, with lifted finger. "And you're not to talk or think till the Doctor comes."

"Give me a kiss, then!"—good prima facie evidence, this, that his brain had suffered no permanent injury.

"Well, he didn't say anything about that," and she bent over him and kissed him with a brimming flood of gratitude in her blue eyes, and he lay quiet for a time.

"Is it dead?" he asked suddenly, with a reminiscent shudder which set all his bruises aching.

"The white horse? Yes, Dieu merci, it's dead! But you're not to talk or think."

"Give me another kiss, then!"—from which it was apparent that he knew very well what kind of medicine was best adapted to his ailments.

The Doctor came down to see him the very first thing every morning, and now he came quietly in, just as Nance had been administering her latest dose.

"Ah—ha, nurse! What are you doing to my patient!"

"I'm only keeping him quiet, sir, as you told me to," said Nance, with a rosy face.

"It's the doctor you ought to pay, not the patient. Well, my boy, how are we this morning? Head aching yet?"

"It does feel a bit queer. Tell me all about last night, Doctor!"

"Ah—ha, yes—last night! Well, you caught the murderer with a vengeance, my boy—or he caught you,"—and then, seeing the puzzlement in the tired eyes, he briefly explained the whole matter.

"And do you mean it was that awful beast killed the others?"

"Without a doubt—and would have killed you in exactly the same way, and exactly the same place, but for my pads and the Senechal's bullets. Queer thing—they found the brute lying all in a heap in Coupee Bay on the very spot where Tom Hamon and Peter Mauger were found."

"Ay-y-y-y-y!" breathed Gard, with a long sigh of relief and a shiver. "I shall never forget him."

"Oh yes, you will—in time. Think of little Nance here. She's a sight better worth thinking of. And now, Miss Nancy, how much good news can you stand all at once, if you try your very hardest?" he asked, with a sparkle in his eyes that somehow seemed to set hers sparkling too.

"Oh made, Doctor!" and the little hands clasped up on her breast, as was her way when greatly moved. "Not——?"

She dared not hope for so much—the wish of her heart—just an inch or so behind the desire for Gard's recovery.

"The cutter this morning brought over one we had feared was lost——"

"Not—not Bernel?"

"Yes, my child, Bernel, by God's good mercy! He was picked up by a Granville trawler, and lay there ill for some days, and could only get back by Jersey and Guernsey. He was to come along with the Senechal in a quarter of an hour—"

But Nance had fallen on her knees and buried her face in the bed-clothes, lest any but God should see it in the rapture of its breaking.

"Dieu merci! Dieu merci! Dieu merci!" she was crying, though none of them heard it.

And "Thank God!" said Stephen Gard with fervour—for Bernel, and for himself, but most of all for Nance.

NOTE.—The names used in this book are necessarily the names still current in Sark. None of the characters presented, however, are in any way connected with any persons now living in the Island.

THE END