ent; 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 fe, 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, whic