A Maid of the Silver Sea | Page 5

which never came to light.
On a pitch-dark, starless night, the high-hedged--and in places deep-sunk--lanes of Little Sark are as black as the inside of an ebony ruler.
When the moon bathes sea and land in a flood of shimmering silver, or on a clear night of stars--and the stars in Sark, you must know, shine infinitely larger and closer and brighter than in most other places--the darkness below is lifted somewhat by reason of the majestic width and height of the glittering dome above. But when moon and stars alike are wanting, then the darkness of a Sark lane is a thing to be felt, and--if you should happen to be a little girl of eight, with a large imagination and sharp ears that have picked up fearsome stories of witches and ghosts and evil spirits--to be mortally feared.
Tom had a wholesome dread of such things himself. But the fear of fourteen, in a great strong body and no heavenly spark of imagination, is not to be compared with the fear of eight and a mind that could quiver like a harp even at its own imaginings. And, to compass his ends, he would blunt his already dull feelings and turn the darkness to his account.
When he knew Nance was out on such a night--on some errand, or in at a neighbour's--to crouch in the hedge and leap silently out upon her was huge delight; and it was well worth braving the grim possibilities of the hedges in order to extort from her the anger in the bleat of terror which, as a rule, was all that her paralysed heart permitted, as she turned and fled.
Almost more amusing--as considerably extending the enjoyment--was it to follow her quietly on such occasions, yet not so quietly but that she was perfectly aware of footsteps behind, which stopped when she stopped and went on again when she went on, and so kept her nerves on the quiver the whole time.
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