"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" she says in perpetual
iteration, through her clenched teeth. But to look at her face and eyes
you might think it was rather the devil she was calling on.

For, ungracious as their lives had been in many respects, yet this
violent breaking of the yoke has left the survivor sore and wounded, and
furious to vent her rage on whom at present she knows not.

She is not allowed inside the school-house--hastily cleared of its usual
occupants, who dodge about among the crowd outside, enjoying the
unlooked-for holiday with gusto in spite of its gruesome origin--and so
she prowls about outside, and the neighbours talk and she hears this,
that, and the other, and presently, with bitter, black face and rage in
her heart, she goes off home to find out Stephen Gard if she can, and
accuse him to his face of the murder of her husband.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW PETER'S DIPLOMACY CAME TO NOUGHT

Peter Mauger had kept himself carefully beyond the range of Julie's wild
black eyes. In the state she was in there was no knowing what she might
do or say. And the words even of a mad woman sometimes stick like burrs.
He began to breathe more freely when she whirled away home.

The Senechal and Constable came out of the school-house at last with
very grave faces.

"The Doctor says his head was staved in with the blows of some round
blunt thing like a mallet," said the Senechal to the gaping crowd, "and
we must hold a proper inquiry. Any of you who saw Tom Hamon last night
will be here at two o'clock to tell us all you know. Tell any others who
know anything about it that they must be here too," and he went back
into the school-house, and the buzzing crowd dispersed, with plenty to
buzz about now in truth.

Peter Mauger went thoughtfully home. He had had no breakfast, and was
feeling the need of it, and he had something in his mind that he wanted
to think out.

And as he ate he thought, slowly and ruminatingly, and with many pauses,
when his jaws stopped working to give his mind freer play, but still
very much to the purpose, and as soon as he had done he set out to put
his project into execution.

Just beyond the Coupee he met Gard hurrying towards Sark, and the state
of Gard's nose and eye, and his torn coat, caught his eye at once.

"What's this about Tom Hamon?" asked Gard hastily.

"He's dead."

"His wife has just told me so. But how did it happen?"

"They're going to find out at sch