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

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 Coupee, 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 Greve 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 Coupees, 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 gra.s.sy d.y.k.e.

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.

CHAPTER VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why should he not--? Why should he not--?

And while his gun still shook in his hands to the wild throbbing of his pulses, Nance pa.s.sed 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!