The Sénéchal is there at the water's edge, Philip Guille of La Ville, and the Greffier, William Robert, who is also the schoolmaster, and Thomas Le Masurier the Prévôt, and Elie Guille the Constable, and Dr. Stradling from Dixcart, and the dark-faced, fierce-eyed woman who cannot keep still, but ranges to and fro in the lip of the tide, and whom they all know now as the wife—the Frenchwoman, though some of them have never seen her before.
A buzz runs round as the boat comes slowly past the point of the Lâches. The woman stops her caged-beast walk and stands gazing fiercely at it, as if she would tear its secret out of it before it touched the shore.
The watchers on the cliff have the advantage. Something like a thrill runs through them, something between a sigh and a groan breaks from them.
The woman wades out to meet the boat. She sees and screams, and chokes. The wives on the beach groan in sympathy.
The body is lifted carefully out and laid on the cool grey stones, and the woman stands looking at it as a tiger may look at her slaughtered mate.
"Stand back! Stand back!" cries the Sénéchal to the thronging crowd; and to the Constable, "Keep them back, you, Elie Guille!" to which Elie Guille growls, "Par madé, but that's not easy, see you!"
The Doctor straightens up from his brief examination, and says a word to the Sénéchal, and to the men about him.
A rough stretcher is made out of a couple of oars and a sail, and the sombre procession passes through the gloomy old tunnel into the Creux Road, and wends its way up to the school-house for proper inquiry to be made as to how Tom Hamon came by his death.
And close behind the stretcher walks the dark-faced woman, with her eyes like coals of fire, and her dress dragged open as though to stop her from choking.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" she says in perpetual iteration, through her clenched teeth. But to look at her face and eyes you might think it was rather the devil she was calling on.