"Five hundred francs would save him!" she told herself. She caught her breath, then little by little again the motherly warmth stole up into her breast deadening for the moment the pain of her jealousy. She straightened to her full height, squaring her broad shoulders like a man and stepped across to the wall.
"It is as much mine as it is his," she said between her teeth.
She ran her arm into the hole in the wall, lifted the heavy plank and drew out a knitted sock tied with a stout string. From the toe she drew out Garron's fortune.
"He shall have it—the gosse—" she said, "and the rest—is as much mine as it is his."
She thrust the package in her breast.
Half an hour later Julie stood, scarcely breathing, her ear to the locked door of his gabion.
"A pretty lot you came from," she overheard the girl say, "that old cat would sooner see you go to jail." The rest of her words were half lost in the rush and suck of the tide slipping out from the gabion's outer jacket of boards. The heavy chain clinked taut with the pull of the outgoing tide, then relaxed in the back rush of water.
"Bah!" she heard him reply, "they are pigs, those peasants. I was a fool to have gone to them for help."
"You had better have gone to the old man," taunted the girl, "as I told you at first."