floor was of trodden earth—hard and dry as cement, with a strip of boarding round the sides and in front of the fire-place. Heavy oaken beams ran across the roof from which depended a great hanging rack littered with all kinds of household odds and ends. Along the beams of the roof on hooks hung two long guns. One end of the room was occupied by a huge fire-place, in one corner of which stood a new iron cooking range, and alongside it a heap of white ashes and some smouldering sticks of gorse under a big black iron pot filled the room with the fragrance of wood smoke. In the opposite side of the fire-place was an iron door closing the great baking oven, and above it ran a wide mantel-shelf on which stood china dogs and glass rolling-pins and a couple of lamps.
A well-scrubbed white wooden table was set ready for supper. On a very ancient-looking black oak stand—cupboard below and shelves above—was ranged a vast assortment of crockery ware, and on the walls hung potbellied metal jugs and cans which shone like silver.
Two doors led to the other rooms of the house, one of them wide open.
One corner of the room was occupied by a great wooden bin eight feet square, filled with dried bracken. On the wide flat side, which looked like a form, a woman and a girl were sitting when the two men entered.
Hamon introduced them briefly as his wife and daughter, and, comely women as Gard had been accustomed to in his own country of Cornwall, there was something about these two, and especially about the younger of the two, which made him of a sudden more than satisfied with the somewhat doubtful venture to which he had bound himself—set a sudden homely warmth in his heart, and made him feel the richer for being there—made him, in fact, glad that he had come.
And yet there was nothing in their reception of him that justified the feeling.
They nodded, indeed, in answer to his bow, but neither their faces nor their manner showed any special joy at his coming.
But that made no difference to him. They were there, and the mere sight of the girl's fine mobile face and large dark blue eyes was a thing to be grateful for.
"You'll be wanting your supper," said Hamon.
"At your own time, please," said the young man, looking towards Mrs. Hamon. "I am really not very hungry"—though truth to tell he well might have been, for the food on the brig had left much to be desired even to one who had been a sailorman himself.
"It is our usual time," said Mrs. Hamon, "and it is all ready. Will you please to sit there."
At the sound of the chairs a boy of fourteen came quietly in and slipped into his seat.
His sister had gone off with a portion on a plate through the open door.
Gard was surprised to find himself hoping it was not her custom to take her meals in private, and was relieved when she came back presently without the plate and sat down by her brother.
"Ah, you, Bernel, as soon as you've done your supper run over and tell Mr. Le Pelley that his white stallion is on our common, and he'd better send for him."
"I'll ride him home," said the boy exultingly.
"No you won't, Bern," said his sister quickly. "He's not safe. You know what an awkward beast he is at times, and you could never get him across the Coupée."
"Pooh! I'd ride him across any day."
"Promise me you won't," she said, with a hand on his arm.
"Oh, well, if you say so," he grumbled. "I could manage him all right though."
Just then the doorway darkened and two young men entered, and threw their caps on the green bed, and sat down with an awkward nod of greeting to the company in general.
"My son Tom," said Mr. Hamon, and Tom jerked another awkward nod towards the stranger. "And Peter Mauger"—Peter repeated the performance, more shyly and awkwardly even than Tom, from a variety of reasons.
Tom was at home, and he had not even been invited—except by Tom. And strangers always made him shy. And then there was Nance, with her great eyes fixed on him, he knew, though he had not dared to look straight at her.
And then the stranger had an air about him—it was hard to say of what, but it made Peter Mauger and Tom conscious of personal uncouthness, and of a desire to get up and go out and wash their hands and have a shave.
Gard, they knew, was the new captain of the mine, chosen by the managers of the company for his experience with men, and he looked as if he had been accustomed to order them about.
His eyes were dark and keen, his face full of energy. Being clean-shaven his age was doubtful. He might be twenty-five or forty. Nance, in her first quick comprehensive glance, had wondered which.
He stood close upon six feet and was broad-chested and square-shouldered. A good figure of a man, clean and upstanding, and with no nonsense about him. A capable-looking man in every respect, and if his manner was quiet and retiring, there was that about him which suggested the possibility of explosion if occasion arose.
Not that the Hamon family as a whole, or any member of it, would have put the matter quite in that way to itself, or herself. But that, vaguely, was the impression produced upon them—an impression of uprightness, intelligence, and reserved strength—and the more strongly, perhaps, because of late these characteristics had been somewhat overshadowed in the Island by the greed of gain and love of display engendered by the opening of the mines.
To old Tom Hamon his coming was wholly welcome. It foreshadowed a strong and more energetic development of the mines and the speedier realization of his most earnest desires.
To Mrs. Hamon it meant some extra household work, which she would gladly undertake since it was her husband's wish to have the stranger live with them, though in his absorption by the mines she had no sympathy whatever.
Nance looked upon him merely as a part of the mines, and therefore to be detested along with the noisy engine-house, the pumps, the damp and dirty miners, and all the rest of it—the coming of which had so completely spoiled her much-loved Sark.
Tom disliked him because he made him feel small and boorish, and of a commoner make. And feelings such as that inevitably try to disprove themselves by noisy self-assertion.
Accordingly Tom—after various jocular remarks in patois to Peter, who would have laughed at them had he dared, but, knowing Nance's feelings towards her brother was not sure how she would take it—loudly and provocatively to Gard—
"Expect to make them mines pay, monsieur?"
"Well, I hope so. But it's too soon to express an opinion till I've seen them."
"They put a lot of money in, and they get a lot of dirt out, but one does not hear much of any silver."
"Sometimes the deepest mines prove the best in the end."
"And as long as there's anybody to pay for it I suppose you go on digging."
"If I thought the mines had petered out—"
"Eh?" said Peter, and then coughed to hide his confusion when they all looked at him.
"I should of course advise the owners to stop work and sink
