A Maid of the Silver Sea

HOW NANCE SHONE THROUGH HER MODEST VEILING

As soon as the old captain's time was up, Gard took up his work in the mines with energetic hopefulness.

His hopefulness was unbounded. His energy he tempered with all the tact and discretion his knowledge of men, and his experience in handling them, had taught him.

His father had been lost at sea the year after his son was born. His mother, a good and God-fearing woman, had strained every nerve to give her boy an education. She died when Stephen was fourteen. He took to his father's calling and had followed it with a certain success for ten years, by which time he had attained the position of first mate.

Then the owner of the Botallack Mine, in Cornwall, having come across him in the way of business, and been struck by his intelligence and aptitude, induced him by a lucrative appointment to try his luck on land.

The managers of the Sark Mines, seeking a special man for somewhat special circumstances, had applied to Botallack for assistance, and Stephen Gard came to Sark as the representative of many hopes which, so far, had been somewhat lacking in results.

But, as old Tom Hamon had predicted, he very soon found that he had laid his hand to no easy plough.

The Sark men were characteristically difficult, and made the difficulty greater by not understanding him—or declining to understand, which came to the same thing—when he laid down his ideas and endeavoured to bring them to his ways.

Some, without doubt, had no English, and their patois was quite beyond him. Others could understand him an they would, but deliberately chose not to—partly from a conservative objection to any change whatever, and partly from an idea that he had been imported for the purpose of driving them, and driving is the last thing a Sark man will submit to.

Old Tom Hamon, and a few others who had a financial interest in the mines, assisted him all they could, in hopes of thereby assisting themselves, but they were few.

As for the Cornishmen and Welshmen, the success or failure of the Sark Mines mattered little to them. There was always mining going on somewhere and competent men were always in demand. They were paid so much a week, small output or large, and without a doubt the small output entailed less labour than the large. They naturally regarded with no great favour the man whose present aim in life it was to ensure the largest output possible.

And so Gard found himself confronted by many difficulties, and, moreover, and greatly to the troubling of his mind, found himself looked upon as a dictator and an interloper by the men whom he had hoped to benefit.

Concerning the mines themselves he was not called upon for an opinion. The managers had satisfied themselves as to the presence of silver. If his opinion had been asked it would have confirmed them. But all he had to do was to follow the veins and win the ore in paying quantities, and he found himself handicapped on every hand by the obstinacy of his men.

Outside business matters he was very well satisfied with his surroundings.

In such spare time as he had, he wandered over the Island with eager, open eyes, marvelling at its wonders and enjoying its natural beauties with rare delight.

The great granite cliffs, with their deep indentations and stimulating caves and crannies; the shimmering blue and green sea, with its long slow heave which rushed in foam and tumult up the rock-pools and gullies; the softer beauties of rounded down and flower-and fern-clad slopes honeycombed with rabbit holes; the little sea-gardens teeming with novel life; in all these he found his resource and a certain consolation for his loneliness.

And in the Hamon household he found much to interest him and not a little ground for speculation.

Old Mrs. Hamon—Grannie—had promptly ordered him in for inspection, and, after prolonged and careful observation from the interior of the black sun-bonnet, had been understood to approve him, since she said nothing to the contrary.

It took him some time to arrive at the correct relationship between young Tom and Nance and Bernel, for it seemed quite incredible that fruit so diverse should spring from one parent stem.

For Tom was all that was rough and boorish—rude to Mrs. Hamon, coarse, and at times overbearing to Nance and Bernel, to such an extent, indeed, that more than once Gard had difficulty in remembering that he himself was only a visitor on sufferance and not entitled to interfere in such intimate family matters.

Tom was not slow to perceive this, and in consequence set himself deliberately to provoke it by behaviour even more outrageous than usual. Time and again Gard would have rejoiced to take him outside and express his feelings to their fullest satisfaction.

With Mrs. Hamon and Bernel he was on the most friendly footing, his undisguised sentiments in the matter of Tom commending him to them decisively.

But with Nance he made no headway whatever.

It was an absolutely new sensation to him, and a satisfaction the meaning of which he had not yet fully gauged, to be living under the same roof with a girl such as this. He found himself listening for her voice outside and the sound of her feet, and learned almost at once to distinguish between the clatter of her wooden pattens and any one else's when she was busy in the yard or barns.

Even though she held him at coolest arm's length, and repelled any slightest attempt at abridgment of the distance, he still rejoiced in the sight of her and found the world good because of her presence in it.

He did not understand her feeling about him in the least. He did not know that she had had to give up her room for him—that she detested the mines and everything tainted by them, and himself as head and forefront of the offence—that she regarded him as an outsider and a foreigner and therefore quite out of place in Sark. He only knew that he saw very little of her and would have liked to see a great deal more.

The very reserve of her treatment of himself—one might even say her passive endurance of him—served but to stimulate within him the wish to overcome it. The attraction of indifference is a distinct force in life.

There was something so trim and neat and altogether captivating to him in the slim energetic figure, in its short blue skirts and print jacket, as it whisked to and fro, inside and out, on its multifarious duties, and still more in the sweet, serious face, glimmering coyly in the shadow of the great sun-bonnet and always moulded to a fine, but, as it seemed to him, a somewhat unnatural gravity in his company.

And yet he was quite sure she could be very much otherwise when she would. For he had heard her singing over her work, and laughing merrily with Bernel; and her face, sweet as it was in its repression, seemed to him more fitted for smiles and laughter and joyousness.

He saw, of course, that brother Tom was a constant source of annoyance to them all, but especially to her, and his blood boiled impotently on her account.

He carried with him—as a delightful memory of her, though not without its cloud—the pretty picture she made when he came upon her one day in the orchard, milking—for, strictly as the Sabbath may be observed, cows must still be milked on a Sunday, not being endowed manna-like, with the gift of miraculous double production on a Saturday.

Her head was pressed into her favourite beast's side, and she was crooning soothingly to it as the white jets ping-panged into the frothing pail, and he stood for a moment watching her unseen.

Then the cow slowly turned her head towards him, considered him gravely for a moment, decided he was unnecessary and whisked her tail impatiently. Nance's lullaby stopped, she looked round with a reproving frown, and he went silently on his way.

It was another Sunday afternoon that, as he lay in the bracken on the slope of a headland, he saw two slim figures racing down a bare slope on the opposite side of a wide blue gulf, with joyous chatter, and recognized Nance and Bernel.

They disappeared and he felt lonely. Then they came picking their way round a black spur below, and stood for a minute or two looking down at something beneath them. Which something he presently discovered must be a pool of size among the rocks, for after a brief retiral, Nance behind a boulder and Bernel into a black hollow, they came out again, she lightly clad in fluttering white and Bernel in nothing at all, and with a shout of delight dived out of sight into the pool below.

He could hear their shouts and laughter echoed back by the huge overhanging rocks. He saw them climb out again and sit sunning themselves on the grey ledge like a pair of sea-birds, and Nance's exiguous white garment no longer fluttered in the breeze.

Then in they went again, and again, and again, till, tiring of the limits of the pool—huge as he afterwards found it to be—they crept over the barnacled rocks to the sea, and flung themselves fearlessly in, and came ploughing through it towards his headland. And he shrank still lower among the bracken, for though he had watched the distant little figure in white with a slight sense of sacrilege, and absolutely no sense of impropriety but only of enjoyment, he would not for all he was worth have had her know that he had watched at all, since he could imagine how she would resent it.

Nevertheless, these unconscious revelations of her real self were to him as jewels of price, and he treasured the memory of them accordingly.

He watched them swim back and disappear among the rocks, and presently go merrily up the bare slope again; and he lay long in the bracken, scarce daring to move, and when he did, he crept away warily, as one guilty of a trespass.

And glad he was that he had done so, for he had proof of her feeling that same night at supper.

Peter Mauger came sheepishly in again with Tom, and Tom, when he had satisfied the edge of his hunger, must wax facetious in his brotherly way.

"Peter and me was sitting among the rocks over against big pool s'afternoon and we saw things"—with a grin.

"Aw, Tom!" deprecated Peter in red confusion.

"An' Peter, he said he never seen anything so pretty in all his life as—"

"Aw now, Tom, you're a liar! I never said anything about it."

"You thought it, or your face was liar too, my boy. Like a dog after a rabbit it was."

"It was just like you both to lie watching," flamed Nance. "If you'd both go and jump into the sea every day you'd be a great deal nicer than you are; and if you'd stop there it would be a great deal nicer for us."

"Aw—Nance!" from Peter, and a great guffaw from Tom, while Gard devoted himself guiltily to his plate.

"You looked nice before you went in," chuckled Tom, who never knew when to stop, "but you looked a sight nicer when you came out and sat on rocks with it all stuck to you—"

"You're a—a—a disgusting thing, Tom Hamon, and you're just as bad, Peter Mauger!" and she looked as if she would have flown at them, but, instead, jumped up and flung out of the room.

Gard's innate honesty would not permit him to take up the cudgels this time. Inwardly he felt himself involved in her condemnation, though none but himself knew it.

But he had taken at times to glowering at Tom, when his rudeness passed bounds, in a way which made that young man at once uncomfortable and angry, and at times provoked him to clownish attempts at reprisal.

Mrs. Hamon bore with the black sheep quietly, since nothing else was possible to her, though her annoyance and distress were visible enough.

Old Tom was completely obsessed with his visions of wealth ever just beyond the point of his pick. He toiled long hours in the damp darknesses below seas, with the sounds of crashing waves and rolling boulders close above him, and at times threateningly audible through the stratum of rocks between; and when he did appear at meals he was too weary to trouble about anything beyond the immediate satisfaction of his needs. Besides, young Tom had long since proved his strength equal to his father's, and remonstrance or rebuke would have produced no effect.

As to Bernel, he was only a boy as yet, but he was Nance's boy and all she would have wished him.

In time he would grow up and be a match for Tom, and meanwhile she would see to it that he grew up as different from Tom in every respect as it was possible for a boy to be.

HOW GRANNIE SCHEMED SCHEMES

Stephen Gard's experience of women had been small.

His mother had been everything to him till she died, when he was fourteen, and he went to sea.

When she was gone, that which she had put into him remained, and kept him clear of many of the snares to which the life of the young sailorman is peculiarly liable.

When he attained a position of responsibility he had had no time for anything else. And so, of his own experience, he knew little of women and their ways.

Less, indeed, than Nance knew of men and their ways. And that was not very much and tended chiefly to scorn and dissatisfaction, seeing that her knowledge was gleaned almost entirely from her experiences of Tom and Peter Mauger. Her father was, of course, her father, and on somewhat of a different plane from other men.

And so, if Nance was a wonder and a revelation to Gard, Gard was no less of, at all events, a novelty in the way of mankind to Nance.

His quiet bearing and good manners, after a life-long course of Tom, had a distinct attraction for her.

That he could burst into flame if occasion required, she was convinced. For, more than once, out of the corner of her eye and round the edge of her sun-bonnet, she had caught his thunderous looks of disgust at some of Tom's carryings-on.

She would, perhaps, have been ashamed to confess it but, somewhere down in her heart, she rather hoped, sooner or later, to see his lightning as well. It would be worth seeing, and she was inclined to think it would be good for Tom—and the rest of the family.

For Gard looked as if he could give a good account of himself in case of need. His well-built, tight-knit figure gave one the impression that he was even stronger than he looked.

If only he had been a Sark man and had nothing to do with those horrid mines! But all her greatest dislikes met in him, and she could not bring herself to the point of relaxing one iota in these matters of which he was unfortunately and unconsciously guilty.

The state of affairs at the mines improved not one whit as the months dragged on. There was a smouldering core of discontent which might break into flame at any moment—or into disastrous explosion if the necessary element were added.

Old Tom did his best, and stood loyally by the new captain and the interests of the mine and himself. But he was in a minority and could so far do no more than oppose vehement talk to vehement talk, and that, as a rule, is much like pouring oil on roaring flames.

Not many of those who were shareholders in the mine were also workers in it, and the workers met constantly at the house of a neighbour, who had turned his kitchen to an undomestic but profitable purpose by supplying drink to the miners at what seemed to the English and Welshmen ridiculously low prices.

In that kitchen the new captain and his new methods were vehemently discussed and handled roughly enough—in words. And hot words and the thoughts they excite, and wild thoughts and the words they find vent in, are at times the breeders of deeds that were better left undone.

To all financially interested in the mines the need for strictest economy and fullest efficiency was patent enough. It was still a case of faith and hope—a case of continual putting in of work and money, and, so far, of getting little out—except the dross which intervened between them and their highest hopes.

There was silver there without a doubt, and the many thin veins they came across lured them on with constant hope of mighty pockets and deposits of which these were but the flying indications.

And all putting in and getting nothing out results in stressful times, in business ventures as in the case of individuals. The great shafts sank deeper and deeper, the galleries branched out far under the sea, and there was a constant call for more and more money, lest that already sunk should be lost.

Mr. Hamon, disappointed in his view of raising money on the farm by Tom's obstinacy, in the bitterness of his spirit and the urgent necessities of the mines, conceived a new idea which, if he was able to carry it out, would serve the double purpose of satisfying his own needs at the recalcitrant Tom's expense.

"I must have more money for the mines," he said to his wife one day in private. "I'm thinking of selling the farm."

"Selling the farm?" gasped Mrs. Hamon, doubtful of her own hearing. For selling the farm is the very last resource of the utterly unfortunate. "Aye, selling the farm. Why not? It'll all come back twenty times over when we strike the pockets, and then we can live where we will, or we can go across to Guernsey, or to England if you like."

But Mrs. Hamon was silent and full of thought. She had no desire for wealth, and still less to live in Guernsey or in England, or anywhere in the world but Sark.

He had been a good husband to her on the whole, until this silver craze absorbed him. She had never found it necessary to counter his wishes before. But this idea of selling the farm cut to the very roots of her life.

For Nance's sake and Bernel's she must oppose it with all that was in her. If the farm were sold the money would all go into those gaping black mouths and bottomless pits at Port Gorey. The home would be broken up—an end of all things. It must not be.

"I should think many times before selling the farm if I were you," she said quietly, and left it there for the moment.

But old Tom, having made up his mind, and the necessities of the case pressing, lost no time over the matter.

"I've been speaking to John Guille about that business," he said, next day, in a confidently casual way.

"About—?"

"About the farm. He'll give me six hundred pounds for it and take the stock at what it's worth, and he's willing we should stop on as tenants at fifty pounds a year rent."

His wife was ominously silent. He glanced at her doubtfully.

"I shall stop on as tenant for the present and Tom can go on working it. When we reach the silver, and the money begins to come back, we can decide what to do afterwards."

Still his wife said nothing, but her face was white and set. It was hard for her to put herself in opposition to him, but here she found it necessary. He was going too far.

It was only when the silence had grown ominous and painful, that she said, slowly and with difficulty—

"I'm sorry to look like going against you, Tom, but I can't see it right you should sell the farm."

"It'll make no difference to you and the young ones. I'll see to that."

"It's not right and you mustn't do it."

"Mustn't do it!—And it's as good as done!"

"It can't be done until your mother and I consent, and we can't see it's a right thing to do."

"Can't you see that you're only saving the farm for Tom?" he argued wrathfully, bottling his anger as well as he could. "It's nothing to you and the young ones in any case."

"I know, but all the same it's not right. If it was to buy another farm it would be different, for you could leave it as you choose. But to throw away the money on those mines—"

This was a lapse from diplomacy and old Tom resented it.

"Throw the money away!" he shouted, casting all restraint to the winds. "Who's going to throw the money away? It's like you women. You never can see beyond the ends of your noses. I'll tell you what I'll do—I'll pay you out your dower right in hard cash. Will that satisfy you?"

If he died she would have a life interest in one-third of the farm, but could not, of course, will it to Nance or Bernel. If he sold the farm and paid her her lawful third in cash, she could do what she chose with it. It was therefore distinctly to her own interest to fall in with his plan.

But, dearly as she would have liked to make some provision, however small, for Nance and Bernel, her whole Sark soul was up in arms against the idea of selling the farm.

It would feel like a break-up of life. Nothing, she was sure, would ever be the same again.

"It's not right," she said simply.

"You're a fool—" and then the look on her quiet face—such a look as she might have worn if he had struck her—penetrated the storm-cloud of his anger. He remembered her years of wifely patience and faithful service, "—a foolish woman. A Sark wife should know which side of her bread the butter is on. Can't you see—"

"I know all that, Tom, but I hope you'll give up this notion of selling the farm. Your mother feels just as I do about it. We've talked it over—"

"I'll talk to her," and he went in at once to the old lady's room.

But Grannie gave him no time for argument.

"It's you's the fool, Tom," she said decisively, as he crossed the threshold. "There's not enough silver in Sark to make a plate for your coffin."

"I brought out more'n enough to make your plate and mine, myself to-day," he said triumphantly.

"Ah, bah! You'd have done better for yourself and for Sark if you'd let it lie."

"I'd have done better still if I'd got twice as much."

"If the good God set silver inside Sark, it was because He thought it was the best place for it, and it's not for the likes of you to be trying to get it out."

"What's it there for if it's not to be got out?"

"You mark me, Tom Hamon, no good will come of all this upsetting and digging out the insides of the Island—nenni-gia!"

"Pergui, mother, where do you think all the silver and gold in the world came from?"

"It didn't come out of our Sark rocks any way, mon gars."

"Good thing for us if it had, ma fé! But, see you here, mother, if I sell the farm it's not you and Nance that need trouble. If I pay out your dowers in hard cash you're both of you better off than you are now, and I'm better off too. It's only Tom could complain, and—"

"It's hard on the lad."

"Bidemme, it's no more than he deserves for his goings-on! Maybe it'll do him good to have to work for his living."

"And you would do that to get your bit more money to throw into those big holes?"

"Never you mind me. I'll take care of myself, and we'll see who's wisest in the end. Now, will you agree to it?"

"I'll talk it over with Nancy again," and the big black sun-bonnet nodded with sapient significance. "Send her to me."

"It's from you I got my good sense," said old Tom approvingly, and went off in search of his wife, while the clever old lady pondered deep schemes.

"Here's the way of it, Nancy," she said, when Mrs. Hamon came in. "He's crazy on these silver mines, and he's willing to pay out our dowers, yours and mine, so that he may throw the rest into the big holes at Port Gorey. Ch'est b'en! Your money and mine take more than half of what he gets. If you'll put yours to mine I'll make up the difference from what I've saved, and we'll retraite the farm, and it shall go to Nance and Bernel when the time comes."

"I can't help thinking it's rather hard on Tom," suggested Mrs. Hamon, with less vigour than before.

The idea appealed strongly to her maternal feelings and she had suffered much from Tom; still her instinct for right was there and was not to be stifled with a word.

"If you feel so when the time comes we could divide it among them, and till then Tom would have to behave himself," said the wily old lady, with a chuckle.

That again appealed strongly to Mrs. Hamon.

"Yes, I think I would agree to that," she said, after thinking it all over.

All things considered, Grannie's scheme was an excellent one and worthy of her.

By a curious anomaly of Sark law, though a man may not mortgage his property without the consent of his next-in-succession, he can sell it outright and do what he chooses with the proceeds. His wife has a dower right of one-third of both real and personal estate, into which she enters upon his death. The right, however, is there while he still lives, and must be taken into consideration in any sale of the property.

All property is sold subject to the "retraite"; in plain English, no sale is completed for six weeks, and within that time every member of the seller's family, in due order of succession, even to the collateral branches, has the right to take over, or withdraw, the property at the same price as has been agreed upon, paying in addition to the Seigneur the trézième or thirteenth part of the price, as by law provided.

If Grannie's scheme were carried out, therefore, she and Mrs. Hamon would become owners of the farm. Tom would be there on sufferance and might be kept within bounds or kicked out. Old Tom would have something more to throw into the holes at Port Gorey. And Nance and Bernel could be adequately provided for. An excellent scheme, therefore, for all concerned—except young Tom, who would have to behave himself better than he was in the habit of doing or suffer the consequences.

"Yes," said Nancy. "I don't see that I'd be doing right by Nance and Bernel not to agree to that. And if Tom behaves himself," at which Grannie grunted doubtfully, "he can have his share when the time comes."

HOW GARD FOUGHT GALES AND TOM

So far the discussion as to the sale of the farm had been confined to the elders.

Young Tom had viewed John Guille's visits to the place with the lowering suspicion of a bull at a stranger's invasion of his field. He wondered what was going on and surmised that it was nothing to his advantage.

Words had been rare between him and his father since his refusal to lend himself to a loan on the farm, but his suspicion got the better of his obstinacy at last.

"What's John Guille want coming about here so much?" he demanded bluntly.

"I suppose he can come if he wants to. He's going to buy the farm."

"Going—to—buy—the—farm!... You—going—to—sell—the—farm—away—from—me?" roared young Tom, like the bull wounded to the quick.

"Ouaie, pardi! And why not? You had the chance of saving it and you wouldn't."

"If you do it, I'll—"

"Ouaie! You'll—"

"I'll—Go'zammin, I'll—I'll—"

"Unless you're a fool, mon gars, you'll be careful what you say or do. It'll all come back from the mines and you'll have your share if you behave yourself."

"—— you and your mines!" was Tom's valedictory, and he flung away in mortal anger; anger, too, which, from a Sark point of view, was by no means unjustified. Selling the estate away from the rightful heir was disinheritance, a blow below the belt which most testators reserve until they are safe from reach of bodily harm.

Tom left the house and cut all connection with his family. He drifted away like a threatening cloud, and the sun shone out, and Stephen Gard, with the rest, found greater comfort in his room than they had ever found in his company.

So gracious, indeed, did the atmosphere of the house become, purged of Tom, that Gard, to his great joy, found even Nance not impossible of approach.

He had always treated her with extremest deference and courtesy, respecting, as far as he was able, her evident wish for nothing but the most distant intercourse.

But he was such a very great change from Tom!

She caught his dark eyes fixed on her at times with a look that reminded her of Helier Baker's black spaniel's, who was a very close friend of hers. They had neither dog nor cat at present at La Closerie, both having been scrimped by the silver mines, when old Tom's first bad attack of economy came on.

Then, at table, Gard was always quietly on the look-out to anticipate her wants. That was a refreshing novelty. Even Bernel, her special crony, thought only of his own requirements when food stood before him.

Now and again Gard began to venture on a question direct to her, generally concerning some bit of the coast he had been scrambling about, and she found it rather pleasant to be able to give information about things he did not know to this undoubtedly clever mine captain.

So, little by little, he grew into her barest toleration but apparently nothing more, and was puzzled at her aloofness and reserve, not understanding at all her bitter feeling against the mines and everything connected with them.

The first time he went to church with her and Bernel was a great white-stone day to him.

He had gone by himself once every Sunday, and done his best to follow the service in French, which he was endeavouring to pick up as best he could. And, if he could only now and again come across a word he understood, still the being in church and worshipping with others—even though it was in an unknown tongue—the sound of the chants and hymns and responses, and the mild austerity and reverent intonation of the good old Vicar, all induced a Sabbath feeling in him, and made a welcome change from the rougher routine of the week, which he would have missed most sorely.

On that special afternoon, he had been lying on the green wall of the old French fort, enjoying that most wonderful view over the shimmering blue sea, with Herm and Jethou resting on it like great green velvet cushions, and Guernsey gleaming softly in the distance, and Brecqhou and the Gouliot Head, and all the black outlying rocks fringed with creamy foam, till it should be time to go along to church.

When he heard voices in the road below and saw Nance and Bernel, he jumped up on the spur of the moment, and pushed through the gorse and bracken, and stood waiting for them.

"Will you let me join you?" he asked, as they came up, fallen shyly silent.

"We don't mind," said Bernel, and they went along together.

"This always strikes me afresh, each time I see it, as one of the most extraordinary places I've come across," said Gard, as they dipped down towards the Coupée.

"Wait till we're coming home," said Bernel hopefully.

"Why?"

"You see those clouds over there? That's wind—sou'-west—you'll see what it's like after church."

"Your gales are as extraordinary as all the rest—and your tides and currents and sea-mists. I suppose one must be born here to understand them. We have a fine coast in Cornwall, but I think you beat us."

"Of course. This is Sark."

"And does no one ever tumble over the Coupée in the dark?"

"N—o, not often, any way. Nance once saw a man blown over."

"That was a bad thing to see," said Gard, turning towards her. "How was it?"

"I was coming from school—"

"All alone?"

"Yes, all alone. The others had gone on; I'd been kept in, and it was nearly dark. It was blowing hard, and when I got to the first rock here I thought it was going to blow me over. So I went down on my hands and knees and was just going to crawl, when old Hirzel Mollet came down the other side with a great sheaf of wheat on his back. He was taking it to the Seigneur for his tithes. And then in a moment he gave a shout and I saw he was gone."

"That was terrible. What did you do?"

"I screamed and crawled back across the narrow bit to the cutting, and ran screaming up to the cottages at Plaisance, and Thomas Carré and his men came running down. But they could do nothing. They went round in a boat from the Creux, but he was dead."

"And how did you get home?"

"Thomas Carré took me across and I ran on alone, but it was months before I could forget poor old Hirzel Mollet."

"I should think so, indeed. That was a terrible thing to see."

The opening of the mines, and the influx of the Welsh and Cornishmen and their wives and children, with their new and up-to-date ideas of living and dressing, had wrought a great and not altogether wholesome change upon the original inhabitants.

All the week they were hard at work in their fields or their boats, but on Sunday the lonely lanes leading to Little Sark were thronged with sightseers, curious to inspect the mines and the latest odd fashions among the miners' wives and daughters.

Odd, and extremely useless little parasols, were then the vogue in England. The miners' women-folk flaunted these before the dazzled eyes of the Sark girls, and Sark forthwith burst into flower of many-coloured parasols.

The mine ladies dressed in printed cottons of strange and wonderful patterns. The Sark girls must do the same.

"Tiens!" ejaculated Nance more than once, as they walked. "Here is Judi Le Masurier with a new pink parasol!—and a straw bonnet with green strings!—and every day you'll see her about the fields without so much as a sun-bonnet on! And Rachel Guille has got a new print dress all red roses and lilac! Mon Gyu, what are we coming to!"

She had many such comments and still more unspoken ones. But Stephen Gard, glancing, whenever he could do so unperceived, at the trim but plainly-dressed little sun-bonneted figure by his side, vowed in his heart that the whole of these others rolled into one were not to be compared with her, and that he would give all the silver in the mines of Sark to win her appreciation and regard.

As they turned the corner at Vauroque, they came suddenly on a number of men lounging on the low wall, and among them Tom Hamon, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets.

As they passed he made some jocular remark in the patois which provoked a guffaw from the rest, and reddened Nance's face, and caused Bernel to glance up at Gard and jerk round angrily towards Tom.

"What did he say?" asked Gard, stopping.

But Nance hurried on and he could not but follow.

"What was it?" he asked again, as he caught up with her.

"If you please, do not mind him. It was just one of his rudenesses."

"They want knocking out of him."

"He is very rude," said Nance, and they passed the Vicarage and turned up the stony lane to the church.

Gard was surprised by the speedy verification of Bernel's weather forecast. Before the service was over the wind was howling round the building with the sounds of unleashed furies, and when they got out it was almost dark.

They bent to the gale and pressed on, Gard with a discomforting remembrance that the Coupée lay ahead.

As they passed Vauroque there seemed a still larger crowd of loafers at the corner, and again Tom's voice called rudely after them.

Gard turned promptly and strode back to where he was sitting on the wall, dangling his feet in devil-may-care fashion. Tom jumped down to meet him.

"Say that again in English, will you?" said Gard angrily.

"Go to—!" said Tom.

Then Gard's left fist caught him on the hinge of the right jaw, and he reeled back among the others who had jumped down to back him up.

"Well—? Want any more?" asked Gard stormily.

"You wait," growled Tom, nursing his jaw, "I'll talk to you one of these days."

"Whenever you like, you cur. What you need is a sound thrashing and a kick over the Coupée."

To his surprise none of the others joined in. But he did not know them.

They might guffaw at Tom's unseemly pleasantries, but they held him in no high esteem—either for himself or for his position, since word of the sale of La Closerie had got about.

Then they were a hardy crew and held personal courage and prowess in high respect. And in this matter there could be no possible doubt as to where the credit lay.

"Goin' to fight him, Tom?" drawled one, in the patois.

"—him!" growled Tom, but made no move that way.

And Gard turned and went over to Nance and Bernel, who were sheltering from the storm in lee of one of the cottages.

If he could have seen it, there was a warmer feeling in her heart for him than had ever been there before—a novel feeling, too, of respect and confidence such as she had never entertained towards any other man in all her life.

For that quick blow had been struck on her behalf, she knew; and it was vastly strange, and somehow good, to feel that a great strong man was ready to stand up for her and, if necessary, to fight for her.

She pressed silently on against the gale, with an odd little glow in her heart, and a feeling as though something new had suddenly come into her life.

The gale caught them at the Coupée, and the crossing seemed to Gard not without its risks.

Bernel bent and ran on through the darkness without a thought of danger.

Gard hesitated one moment and Nance stretched a hand to him, and he took it and went steadily across.

And, oh, the thrill of that first living touch of her! The feel of the warm nervous little hand sent a tingling glow through him such as he had never in his life experienced before. Verily, a white-stone day this, in spite of winds and darkness!

The gale howled like ten thousand demons, and the noise of the waves in Grande Grève came up to them in a ceaseless savage roar. Gard confessed to himself that, alone, he would never have dared to face that perilous storm-swept bridge. But the small hand of a girl made all the difference and he stepped alongside her without a tremor.

"B'en, Monsieur Gard, was I right?" shouted Bernel in his ear, as they stepped within the shelter of the cutting on the farther side.

"You were right. It's a terrible place in a gale."

"You wait," shouted Bernel. "We're not home yet."

"No more Coupées, any way," and they bent again into the storm.

They had not gone more than a hundred yards when, through some freakish funnelling of the tumbled headlands, the gale gripped them like a giant playing with pigmies, caught them up, flung them bodily across the road and held Gard and Bernel pinned and panting against the green bank, while Nance disappeared over it into the shrieking darkness.

"Good heavens!" gasped Gard, fearful lest she should have been blown over the cliffs, and wriggled himself up under the ceaseless thrashing of the gale and was whirled off the top into the field beyond.

There the pressure was less, and, getting on to his hands and knees to crawl in search of Nance, he found her close beside him crouching in the lee of the grassy dyke.

He crept into shelter beside her, and presently, in the lull after a fiercer blast than usual, she set off, bent almost double, and in a moment they were in comparative quiet. Nance crawled through a gap into the road and they found Bernel waiting for them.

"Knew you'd come through there. That's what that gap's made for," he shouted.

"I've been in many a storm but I never felt wind like that before," said Gard, as soon as his breath came back.

"If you'd stopped with me you'd have been all right," said Bernel. "There was no need for you to go after Nance. We've been through that lots of times, haven't we, Nance?"

"Lots."

"I shall know next time," said Gard, and to Nance it was a fresh experience to think of some one going out of his way to be of possible service to her.

HOW TOM WANTED TO BUT DIDN'T DARE

Before the six weeks allowed by Sark law for the retraiting of the property had expired, Grannie and Mrs. Hamon put in their claims, and it became generally known that they would become the new owners of La Closerie, in place of John Guille.

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 Coupée 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 Coupée 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.

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.

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 Coupée 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 fé, 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 Carré at the Plaisance Cottages by the Coupée, 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.