"I'm not sure—" began Tanquerel, in his slow drawling way.
"You're only a witness, anyway, Philip," said Hamon. "I'm the oppressor, and if he comes again I'll give him some more of what he had last night. He may Haro till he's hoarse, for me. Till the Sénéchal bids me go, I stop here;" and Tanquerel shrugged his shoulders and went off down the slope to his pots.
"More trouble," said Carré gloomily.
"We'll meet it—with our fists," said Hamon cheerfully. "M. le Sénéchal is not going to be browbeaten by a man he's flung out of the Island."
And so it turned out. The cutter had brought M. Le Masurier a letter from the authorities in Guernsey which pleased him not at all. It informed him that Martel, having married into Sercq and settled on Sercq, belonged to Sercq, and they would have none of him, and were accordingly sending him home again.
When Martel appeared to lodge his complaint, and claim the old Island right to cessation of oppression and trial of his cause, M. le Sénéchal was prepared for him. It was not the man's fault that he was back on their hands, and he said nothing about that. As to his complaint, however, he drew a rigid line between the past and the future. In a word, he declined to interfere in the matter of the cottage until the case should be tried and the Court should give its judgment.
"Hamon must not, of course, interfere with you any further. But neither must you interfere with him," said the wise man. "If you should do so he retains the right that every man has of defending himself, and will doubtless exercise it."
At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold.
He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment which his cut lips did not in reality permit.
He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a sarcastic grunt for his pains.