To old Tom Hamon his coming was wholly welcome.  It foreshadowed a strong and more energetic development of the mines and the speedier realization of his most earnest desires.

To Mrs. Hamon it meant some extra household work, which she would gladly undertake since it was her husband’s wish to have the stranger live with them, though in his absorption by the mines she had no sympathy whatever.

Nance looked upon him merely as a part of the mines, and therefore to be detested along with the noisy engine-house, the pumps, the damp and dirty miners, and all the rest of it—­the coming of which had so completely spoiled her much-loved Sark.

Tom disliked him because he made him feel small and boorish, and of a commoner make.  And feelings such as that inevitably try to disprove themselves by noisy self-assertion.

Accordingly Tom—­after various jocular remarks in patois to Peter, who would have laughed at them had he dared, but, knowing Nance’s feelings towards her brother was not sure how she would take it—­loudly and provocatively to Gard—­

“Expect to make them mines pay, monsieur?”

“Well, I hope so.  But it’s too soon to express an opinion till I’ve seen them.”

“They put a lot of money in, and they get a lot of dirt out, but one does not hear much of any silver.”

“Sometimes the deepest mines prove the best in the end.”

“And as long as there’s anybody to pay for it I suppose you go on digging.”

“If I thought the mines had petered out—­”

“Eh?” said Peter, and then coughed to hide his confusion when they all looked at him.

“I should of course advise the owners to stop work and sink no more money.”

“It’ll be a bad day for Sark when that happens,” said old Tom.  “But it’s not going to happen.  The silver’s there all right.  It only wants getting out.”

“If it’s there we’ll certainly get it out,” said Gard, and although he said it quietly enough, old Tom felt much better about things in general.

“You’re the man for us,” he said heartily.  “We’ll all be rich before we die yet.”

“Depends when we die,” growled Tom—­in which observation—­obvious as it was—­there was undoubtedly much truth.  And then, his little suggestion of provocation having broken like ripples on Gard’s imperturbability, he turned on Peter and tried to stir him up.

“You don’t get on any too fast with your making up to la garche, mon gars,” he said in the patois again.

“Aw—­Tom!” remonstrated Peter, very red in the face at this ruthless laying bare of his approaches.

“Get ahead, man!  Put your arm round her neck and give her a kiss.  That’s the way to fetch ’em.”

At which Nance jumped up with fiery face and sparks in her eyes and left the room, and Gard, who understood no word of what had passed, yet understood without possibility of doubt that Tom’s speech had been mortally offensive to his sister, and set him down in his own mind as of low esteem and boorish disposition.