be a bad day for Sark when that happens," said old Tom. "But it's not going to happen. The silver's there all right. It only wants getting out."
"If it's there we'll certainly get it out," said Gard, and although he said it quietly enough, old Tom felt much better about things in general.
"You're the man for us," he said heartily. "We'll all be rich before we die yet."
"Depends when we die," growled Tom—in which observation—obvious as it was—there was undoubtedly much truth. And then, his little suggestion of provocation having broken like ripples on Gard's imperturbability, he turned on Peter and tried to stir him up.
"You don't get on any too fast with your making up to la garche, mon gars," he said in the patois again.
"Aw—Tom!" remonstrated Peter, very red in the face at this ruthless laying bare of his approaches.
"Get ahead, man! Put your arm round her neck and give her a kiss. That's the way to fetch 'em."
At which Nance jumped up with fiery face and sparks in her eyes and left the room, and Gard, who understood no word of what had passed, yet understood without possibility of doubt that Tom's speech had been mortally offensive to his sister, and set him down in his own mind as of low esteem and boorish disposition.
As for Peter, to whom such advice was as useless as the act would have been impossible at that stage of the proceedings, he was almost as much upset as Nance herself. He got up with a shamefaced—
"Aw, Tom, boy, that was not good of you," and made for his hat, while Tom sat with a broad grin at the result of his delicate diplomacy, and Gard's great regret was that it was not possible for him to take the hulking fellow by the neck and bundle him out of doors.
Old Tom made some sharp remark to his son, who replied in kind; Mrs. Hamon sat quietly aloof, as she always did when Tom and his father got to words, and Bernel made play with his supper, as though such matters were of too common occurrence to call for any special attention on his part.
Then Nance's face framed in a black sun-bonnet gleamed in at the outer door.
"Come along, Bern, and we'll go and tell the Seigneur where his white horse is," and she disappeared, and Bernel, having polished off everything within reach, got up and followed her.
"Will you please to take a look at the mines to-night?" asked old Tom of his guest, anxious to interest him in the work as speedily as possible.
"We might take a bit of a walk, and you can tell me all you will about things. But I don't take hold till the first of the month, and I don't want to interfere until I have a right to. I suppose my baggage will be coming up?"
"Ach, yes! Tom, you take the cart and bring Mr. Gard's things up. They are lying on the quay down there. Then we will go along, if you please!"
Old Tom marched him through the wonderful amber twilight to the summit of the bluff behind the engine-house—whence Gard could just make out his box and carpet-bag still lying on the quay below. And all the way the old man was volubly explaining the many changes necessary, in his opinion, to bring the business to a paying basis. All which information Gard accepted for testing purposes, but gathered from the total the fact that through ill health on the part of the departing captain, the ropes all round had got slack and that the tightening of them would be a matter of no little delicacy and difficulty.
Sark men, Mr. Hamon explained, were very free and independent, and hated to be driven. They did piecework—so much per fathom, and were constitutionally, he admitted, a bit more particular as to the so much than as to the fathom. While the Cornish and Welsh men, receiving weekly wages, had also grown slack and did far less work than they did at first and than they might, could, and should do.
"But," said old Tom frankly, scratching his head, "I don't know's I'd like the job myself. Your men are quiet enough to look at, but they can boil over when they're put to it. And our men—well, they're Sark, and there's more'n a bit of the devil in them."
"I must get things round bit by bit," said Gard quietly. "It never pays to make a fuss and bustle men. Softly does it."
"I'm thinking you can do it if any man can."
"I'll have a good try any way."
"Whereabouts does the Seigneur live?" he asked presently, and inconsequently as it seemed, but following out a train of thought of his own which needed no guessing at.
"The Seigneur? Over there in Sark—across the Coupée."
"What's the Coupée?"
"The Coupée?—Mon Gyu!"—at such colossal ignorance—"Why, … the Coupée's the Coupée. … Come along, then. Maybe you can get a look at it before it's too dark."
They had got quite out of sound of the clanking engine, and were travelling a well-made road, when their attention was drawn to a lively struggle proceeding on the common between the road and the cliff.
Tom, setting out after the troubled Peter, had caught sight of the Seigneur's white horse and had forthwith decided to take him home. Peter, agreeing that it was a piece of neighbourliness which the Seigneur would appreciate, had turned back to give his assistance.
By some cajolery they had managed to slip a halter with a special length of rope over the wary white head, and there for the moment matters hung. For the white horse, with his forelegs firmly planted, dragged at one end of the rope and the two men at the other, and the issue remained in doubt.
The doubt, however, was suddenly solved by the white horse deciding on more active measures. He swung his great head to one side, dragged the men off their feet and started off at a gallop, they hanging on as best they could.
Old Tom and Gard set off after them to see the end of the matter, and suddenly, as the roadway dipped between high banks and became a hollow way, the white beast gave a shrill squeal, flung up his heels, jerked himself free, and vanished like a streak of light into the darkness of the lofty bank in front.
"Mon Gyu!" cried old Tom, and sped up the bank to see the end.
But the white horse knew his way and had no fear. They were just in time to hear the rattle of his hoofs, as he disappeared with a final shrill defiance into the outer darkness on the further side of a mighty gulf, while a stone dislodged by his flying feet went clattering down into invisible depths.
"He's done it," panted old Tom, while Gard gazed with something like awe at the narrow pathway, wavering across from side to side of the great abyss, out of which rose the growl of the sea.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Coupée. It's a wonder he managed it. The path slipped in the winter and it's narrow in places."
"And do people cross it in the dark?" asked Gard, thinking of the girl and boy who had gone to see the Seigneur.
"Och yes! It is not bad when you're used to it. Come and see!" and he led the way back across the common to the road.
Gard walked cautiously behind him as he went across the crumbling white pathway with the carelessness of custom, and, sailor as he had been, he was not sorry when the other side was reached, and he could stand in the security of the cutting and look back, and down
