ly to show his
extremity. "As soon as it comes, Bernel, you help Nance up the ladders.
Then run home both of you. Your things are at the top, Bernel. And here
comes the brandy. Now, up you go! Do you think you can manage the
ladders?" he asked Nance.

"I'll manage them," and they crept away into the darkness of the adit,
and Nance thought she had never been in such a hideous place in her
life.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW GARD REFUSED AN OFFER AND MADE AN ENEMY

They had been most gratefully and graciously free from Tom since his
father's death, but he reappeared a day or two before the end of the six
weeks, and brought with him a wife from Guernsey--not even a Guernsey
woman, however, but a Frenchwoman from the Cotentin--black-haired,
black-eyed, good-looking, after the type that would please such an one
as Tom Hamon--somewhat over-bold of face and manner for the rest of the
family.

Philip Tanquerel had had to bring all his sagacity to bear on his
difficult task of apportioning the lots, and Tom, who knew every inch of
the ground and all its capacities, grinned viciously now and again at
the acumen displayed in the divisions.

The allotment of the house-room had presented difficulties.

The great kitchen at La Closerie occupied the whole centre third of the
ground floor, the remaining thirds of the space on each side being taken
up with the rarely-used best room and three bedrooms, all pretty much of
a size, and all opening into the kitchen. Up above, under the sloping
thatch was the great solie or loft, entered from the outside through the
door-window in the gable by means of a short wooden ladder.

Grannie's dower rights, when Tom's grandfather died, had obtained for
her the two rooms constituting one-third of the house on the south side
of the kitchen, and certain rights of use of the kitchen itself. As she
needed only one room, she had bartered off the other and her kitchen
rights to her son and his wife in exchange for food and attendance, and
the arrangement had worked excellently.

But, on her first glimpse of young Tom's quick-eyed, bold-faced
Frenchwoman, she had vowed she would have none of her; and in the end,
as the result of some chaffering, it was arranged that Tom and his wife
should have the kitchen and all the rooms north of it, while Mrs. Hamon
and Nance and Bernel had the room next Grannie's for a kitchen, and the
great loft for bedrooms, all the necessary and duly specified
alterations to