“Hamon must not, of course, interfere with you any further.  But neither must you interfere with him,” said the wise man.  “If you should do so he retains the right that every man has of defending himself, and will doubtless exercise it.”

At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold.

He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment which his cut lips did not in reality permit.

He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a sarcastic grunt for his pains.

He tried to get a lodging elsewhere, but no one would receive him.

He begged for food.  No one would give him a crust, and everyone he asked kept a watchful eye on him until he was clear of the premises.

He pulled some green corn, and husked it between his hands, and tried to satisfy his complaining stomach with that and half-ripe blackberries.

He crept up to a farmsteading after dark, intent on eggs, a chicken, a pigeon,—­anything that might stay the clamour inside.  The watch-dogs raised such a riot that he crept away again in haste.

The hay had been cut in the churchyard.  That was No Man’s Land, and none had the right to hunt him out of it.  So he made up a bed alongside a great square tomb, and slept there that night, and scared the children as they went past to school next morning.

One of the cows at Le Port gave no milk that day, and Dame Vaudin pondered the matter weightily, and discussed it volubly with her neighbours, but did not try their remedies.

During the day he went over to Little Sercq in hopes of snaring a rabbit.  But the rabbits understood him and were shy.  When he found himself near the Cromlech it suggested shelter, and creeping in to curl himself up for a sleep, he came unexpectedly on a baby rabbit paralysed with fear at the sight of him.  It was dead before it understood what was happening.  He tore it in pieces with his fingers and ate it raw.  They found its skin and bones there later on.

Under the stimulus of food his brain worked again.  There was no room for him in Sercq, that was evident.  He was alien, and the clan spirit was too strong for him.

He crept back across the Coupee in the dark, and passed a man there who bade him good-night, not knowing till afterwards who he was.

Next morning, when Philip Carre came in from his fishing and climbed the zigzag above Havre Gosselin, he was surprised at the sight of George Hamon smoking in the doorway of the cottage.

“Why, George, I thought you were off fishing,” he said.

“Why then?”

“Your boat’s away.”  And Hamon was leaping down the zigzag before he had finished, while Carre followed more slowly.  But no amount of anxious staring across empty waters will bring back a boat that is not there.  The boat was gone and Paul Martel with it, and neither was seen again in Sercq.