"Let's keep on," said Gard. "Things generally happen just when you don't
expect them."
"That's so," grunted the Senechal. And they decided to keep on.
Fortunately, the nights were warm and mostly fine. When neither moon nor
stars afforded him light enough for a safe crossing, he took a lantern,
so that no one who desired to knock him on the head need miss the chance
for lack of seeing him.
And when, after their lonely waiting, the watchers in the heather saw
the lantern come joggling down the steep cutting from Sark, they braced
themselves for eventualities, and hefted their guns, and pricked up
their ears and made ready.
And when it had wavered slowly along the path between the great pits of
darkness on either hand, and had gone joggling on into Little Sark, they
sank back into their formes with each his own particular exclamation,
and lay waiting till the light came back.
Times of tension and endurance which told upon them all, but bore most
heavily on Gard, since the onslaught, when it came, must fall upon him,
and the absolute ignorance as to how and when and whence it might come,
kept every nerve within him strung like a fiddle-string.
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