"Peter? I'm asking you. I want him. Where is he?"
"He went to Little Sark last night, and he's never come home."
"Never come home? Why, what's taken him? If he'd been with me last night he'd have seen something! That Nance Hamon swam across to the rock with nothing on but her shift to take food to Gard, and I caught her at it—the shameless hussy!"
"Maybe Peter's heard of it an' gone across with 'em again," suggested one. "He was terrible hot against Gard."
"And reason he had to be hot against him," cried Julie. "Who'll find out for me where he's got to, and when they're going out after Gard? I would go too and see the end of him."
A couple of burly husbands came rolling round the corner towards their breakfasts and caught her words.
"Doubt you'll have to go alone, mistress," said one, phlegmatically. "There's ghosts on L'Etat, they do say, though sure the one John Drillot brought across was dead enough."
"If he's there," said the other, plumbing Julie's feelings, "he's safe as a pig in a pen."
"Where's our Peter?" demanded Mrs. Guille.
"Peter? I d'n know. What's come of him?" and they stared blankly at her.