Creeping fearfully along in the blackness, with eyes and ears on the strain, and both little shoulders humped against the expected apparition of Tom—­or worse, she would become aware of the footsteps behind her.

Then she would stop suddenly to make sure, and stand listening painfully, and hear nothing but the low hoarse growl of the sea that rarely ceases, day or night, among the rocks of Little Sark.

Then she would take a tentative step or two and stop again, and then dash on.  And always there behind her were the footsteps that followed in the dark.

Then she would fumble with her foot for a stone and stoop hastily—­for you are at a disadvantage with ghosts and with Toms when you stoop—­and pick it up and hurl it promiscuously in the direction of the footsteps, and quaver, in a voice that belied its message, “Go away, Tom Hamon!  I can see you,”—­which was a little white fib born of the black urgency of the situation;—­“and I’m not the least bit afraid,”—­which was most decidedly another.

And so the journey would progress fitfully and in spasms, and leave nightmare recollections for the disturbance of one’s sleep.

But there were variations in the procedure at times.

As when, on one occasion, Nance’s undiscriminating projectile elicited from the darkness a plaintive “Moo!” which came, she knew, from her favourite calf Jeanetton, who had broken her tether in the field and sought companionship in the road, and had followed her doubtfully, stopping whenever she stopped, and so received the punishment intended for another.

Nance kissed the bruise on Jeanetton’s ample forehead next day very many times, and explained the whole matter to her at considerable length, and Jeanetton accepted it all very placidly and bore no ill-will.

Another time, when Nance had taken a very specially compounded cake over to her old friend, Mrs. Baker, as a present from her mother, and had been kept much longer than she wished—­for the old lady’s enjoyment of her pretty ways and entertaining prattle—­she set out for home in fear and trembling.

It was one of the pitch-black nights, and she went along on tiptoes, hugging the empty plate to her breast, and glancing fearfully over first one shoulder, then the other, then over both and back and front all at once.

She was almost home, and very grateful for it, when the dreaded black figure leaped silently out at her from its crouching place, and she tore down the lane to the house, Tom’s hoarse guffaws chasing her mockingly.

The open door cleft a solid yellow wedge in the darkness.  She was almost into it, when her foot caught, and she flung head foremost into the light with a scream, and lay there with the blood pouring down her face from the broken plate.

A finger’s-breadth lower and she would have gone through life one-eyed, which would have been a grievous loss to humanity at large, for sweeter windows to a large sweet soul never shone than those out of which little Nance Hamon’s looked.