ulkily and walked back
across the Coupee.

The pleasure of the day was broken. Black Boy's face and scream and fall
were with us still, and presently we all went cautiously back across the
narrow way. And no girl rode, but each one shuddered as she passed the spot
where the loose edge of the cliff was scored with two deep grooves; and we
others, looking down, saw a tumbled black mass lying in the white surf
among the rocks.

CHAPTER XV

HOW I FELT THE GOLDEN SPUR

George Hamon was sorely put out at the loss of his horse and by so cruel a
death. In his anger he laid on young Torode a punishment hard to bear.

For when the young man offered to pay for Black Boy, Uncle George gave him
the sharpest edge of his tongue in rough Norman French, and turned him out
of his house, and would take nothing from him.

"You pledged me your word and you broke it," said he, "and you think to
redeem it with money. Get out of this and never speak to me again! We are
honest men in Sercq, and you--you French scum, you don't know what honour
means." And Torode was forced to go with the unpayable debt about his neck,
and the certain knowledge that all Sercq thought with his angry creditor
and ill of himself. And to such a man that was bitterness itself.

During the ten days that followed Riding Day, my mind was very busy
settling, as it supposed, the future,--mine and Carette's. For, whether she
desired me in hers or not, I had no doubts whatever as to what I wanted
myself. My only doubts were as to the possibilities of winning such a
prize.

The effect of the Miss Maugers' teaching on Carette herself had been to
lift her above her old companions, and indeed above her apparent station
in life, though on that point my ideas had no solid standing ground. For,
as I have said, the Le Marchants of Brecqhou were more or less of mysteries
to us all, and there had been such upsettings just across the water there,
such upraisings and downcastings, that a man's present state was no
indication of what he might have been. The surer sign was in the man
himself, and much pondering of the matter led me to think that Jean Le
Marchant might well be something more than simply the successful smuggler
he seemed, and that Carette's dainty lady ways might well be the result of
natural growth and not simply of the Miss Maugers' polishing.

I would not have had it otherwise. I wanted the very best for her; and if
she were by birth a lady, let the lad