e!"

The felon's widow uttered these last words so immovably that Martial
lost all hope of mollifying this soul of bronze.

"Since it is so," he replied, "hear me in my turn, mother,--I remain!"

"Ha! ha!"

"Not in this house. I shall be assassinated by Nicholas, or poisoned by
Calabash. But, as I have no means of lodging elsewhere, I and the
children will occupy the hovel at the end of the island; the door of
that is strong, and I will make it still more secure. Once there, I will
barricade myself, and, with my gun, my stick, and my dog, I am afraid of
no one. To-morrow morning I will take the children with me. During the
day they will be with me, either in my boat or elsewhere; and, at night,
they shall sleep near me in the hovel. We can live on the fish I catch
until I find some means of placing them, and find it I will."

"Oh! That's it, is it?"

"Neither you, nor my brother, nor Calabash can prevent this, can you? If
your robberies and murders are discovered during my abode on the island,
so much the worse; but I'll chance it. I will declare that I came back
and remained here in consequence of the children, to prevent them from
becoming infamous. They will decide. The children shall not remain
another day in this abode; and I defy you and your gang to drive me from
this island!"

The widow knew Martial's resolution, and the children, who loved their
eldest brother as much as they feared her, would certainly follow him
unhesitatingly whenever and wherever he called them. As to himself, well
armed and most determined, always on his guard, in his boat during the
day, and secure and barricaded in the hovel on the island at night, he
had nothing to fear from the malevolence of his family.

Martial's project, then, might be realised in every particular; but the
widow had many reasons for preventing its execution. In the first place,
as honest work-people sometimes consider the number of their children as
wealth, in consequence of the services which they derive from them, the
widow relied on Amandine and Francois to assist her in her atrocities.
Then, what she had said of her desire to avenge her husband and son was
true. Certain beings, nurtured, matured, hardened in crime, enter into
open revolt, into war of extermination, against society, and believe
that, lay fresh crimes, they shall avenge themselves for the just
penalties which have been exacted from them and those belonging to them.
Then, too, the sinister