Part 5 (2/2)

”I've seen a many as did not care to cross that, first time they saw it,” said old Tom with a chuckle.

”Well, I'm not surprised at that. It's apt to make one's head spin.”

”I brought captain of brig up here and he wouldn't put a foot on it. Not for five hundred pounds, he said.”

”It would have taken more than five hundred pounds to piece him together if he'd tumbled down there.”

”That's so.”

A young moon, and a clear sky still rarely light and lofty in the amber after-glow, gave them a safe pa.s.sage back.

When they reached the house among the trees, Gard bethought him of his belongings.

”And my things from the quay?” he suggested.

”G'zammin! That boy has forgotten all about them, I'll be bound. I'll take the cart down myself.”

”I'll go with you.”

When they got back with the box and bag, which no one had touched since they were dropped on to the platform four hours before, they found that Nance and Bernel had got home and gone off to bed, having taken advantage of being across in Sark to call on some of their friends there.

Gard wondered how they would have fared if they had happened to be on the Coupee when the white horse went thundering across.

He dreamed that night that he was cautiously treading an endless white path that swung up and down in the darkness like a piece of ribbon in a breeze. And a great white horse came plunging at him out of the darkness, and just as he gave himself up for lost, a sweet firm face in a black sun-bonnet appeared suddenly in front of him, and the white horse squealed and leaped over them and disappeared, while the stones he had displaced went rattling down into the depths below.

CHAPTER V

HOW NANCE SHONE THROUGH HER MODEST VEILING

As soon as the old captain's time was up, Gard took up his work in the mines with energetic hopefulness.

His hopefulness was unbounded. His energy he tempered with all the tact and discretion his knowledge of men, and his experience in handling them, had taught him.

His father had been lost at sea the year after his son was born. His mother, a good and G.o.d-fearing woman, had strained every nerve to give her boy an education. She died when Stephen was fourteen. He took to his father's calling and had followed it with a certain success for ten years, by which time he had attained the position of first mate.

Then the owner of the Botallack Mine, in Cornwall, having come across him in the way of business, and been struck by his intelligence and apt.i.tude, induced him by a lucrative appointment to try his luck on land.

The managers of the Sark Mines, seeking a special man for somewhat special circ.u.mstances, had applied to Botallack for a.s.sistance, and Stephen Gard came to Sark as the representative of many hopes which, so far, had been somewhat lacking in results.

But, as old Tom Hamon had predicted, he very soon found that he had laid his hand to no easy plough.

The Sark men were characteristically difficult, and made the difficulty greater by not understanding him--or declining to understand, which came to the same thing--when he laid down his ideas and endeavoured to bring them to his ways.

Some, without doubt, had no English, and their patois was quite beyond him. Others could understand him an they would, but deliberately chose not to--partly from a conservative objection to any change whatever, and partly from an idea that he had been imported for the purpose of driving them, and driving is the last thing a Sark man will submit to.

Old Tom Hamon, and a few others who had a financial interest in the mines, a.s.sisted him all they could, in hopes of thereby a.s.sisting themselves, but they were few.

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