When the rumour at length reached Tom's ears, he, not unnaturally
perhaps, set down the whole matter as a plot to oust him from his
heritage and put Nance and Bernel in his place.
So his anger grew, and he was powerless. And the impotence of an angry
man may lead him into gruesome paths. Smouldering fires burst out at
times into devastating flames, and maddened bulls put down their heads
and charge regardless of consequences.
When Tom Hamon asked Peter Mauger to lend him his gun to go
rabbit-shooting one night, Peter, if he had been a thoughtful man, would
have declined.
But Peter was above all things easy-going, and anything but thoughtful
of such matters as surged gloomily in Tom's angry head, and he lent him
his gun as a matter of course.
And Tom went off across the Coupee into Little Sark, nursing his black
devil and thinking vaguely and gloomily of the things he would like to
do. For to rob a man of his rights in this fashion was past a man's
bearing, and if he was to be ruined for the sake of that solemn-faced
slip of a Nance and that young limb of a Bernel, he might as well take
payment for it all, and cut their crowing, and give them something to
remember him by.
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