t 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.

As for Peter, to whom such advice was as useless as the act would have
been impossible at that stage of the proceedings, he was almost as much
upset as Nance herself. He got up with a shamefaced--

"Aw, Tom, boy, that was not good of you," and made for his hat, while
Tom sat with a broad grin at the result of his delicate diplomacy, and
Gard's great regret was that it was not possible for him to take the
hulking fellow by the neck and bundle him out of doors.

Old Tom made some sharp remark to his son, who replied in kind; Mrs.
Hamon sat quietly aloof, as she always did when Tom and his father got
to words, and Bernel made play with his supper, as though such matters
were of too common occurrence to call for any special attention