“Where did you find these things?”

“Between Plaisance and the Coupee.”

“What do you make of them?”

“Seemed to me those red spots might be blood.  The other’s a button torn off some one’s coat.”

“Have you any idea whose blood and whose coat?”

“The blood I don’t know.  The button, I believe, is off Mr. Gard’s coat,”—­at which another growl and hum went round.

“And you know nothing more about the matter?”

“That’s all I know.”

“Very well.  Sit down.  Mr. Gard!” and Gard pushed his way among unyielding legs and shoulders, and stood before the grave-faced men at the table.

They all knew him and had all come to esteem what they knew of him.  They knew also of his difficulties with his men, and that there was a certain feeling against him in some quarters.  Not one of them thought it likely he had done this dreadful thing.  But—­there was no knowing to what lengths even a decent man might go in anger.  All their brows pinched a little at sight of his torn coat and missing button.

He was duly sworn, and the Senechal bade him tell all he knew of the matter.

“That button is mine,” he said quietly, holding out the lapel of his coat for all to see.  “If there is blood on that stone it is mine also”—­at which a growling laugh of derision went round the spectators.

Gard flushed at this unmistakable sign of hostility.  The Senechal threatened to turn them all out if anything of the kind happened again, and Gard proceeded to recount in minutest detail the happenings of the previous night—­so far as they concerned himself and Tom Hamon.

“What were you doing down at the Coupee at that time of night?” asked the Senechal.

“I had been having a smoke and was just about to turn in when I met Miss Hamon hurrying to the Doctor’s for some medicine.  I asked her permission to accompany her, and then took her home to Little Sark.  It was when I was coming back that I met Tom Hamon.”

“Yes, little Nance came to me about half-past ten,” said the Doctor, “I remember I asked her if she was not afraid to go all that way home alone, and she said she had a friend with her.”

“Was there any specially bad feeling between you and Tom Hamon?”

“There had always been bad feeling, but any one who knows anything about it knows that it was not of my making.”

“Will you explain it to us?”

“If you say I must.  One does not like to say ill things of the dead.”

“We want to get to the bottom of this matter, Mr. Gard.  Tell us all you know that will help us.”

“Very well, sir, but I am sorry to have to go into that.  It all began through Tom’s bad treatment of his stepmother and step-sister and brother when I lived at La Closerie.  I took sides with them and tried to bring him to better manners.  We rarely met without his flinging some insult after me.  They were generally in the patois, but I knew them to be insults by his manner and by the way they were greeted by those who did understand.”