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Updated: June 15, 2025
"How is the path?" I asked, as I got down for a look. "I've seen it better and I've seen it worse," said Charles Vaudin. "But, all the same, you know, on horseback " and he shook his head doubtfully. "When it's only your own feet you have to look after it's right enough," said Elie Guérin. "But when it's a horse's and they're four feet apart it's a different kind of game.
If they had indeed run Gard to his hiding-place, as Philip Vaudin had said, there could be but one possible end to it; and she sat, sad-eyed and wistful, waiting for them to come up again. It seemed as if they would never come, and she never took her eyes off the rock wall on L'Etat. And then at last she sprang to her feet. One of them had come up again. She could not see which.
Then, while we lay spent and panting, the men mopping themselves with their kerchiefs, and the girls fanning themselves with theirs, Aunt Jeanne, who had had time to recover from her unwonted exertions with Uncle Henry Vaudin, recited some of the old-time poems, of which she managed to carry a string in her head in addition to all the other odds and ends which it contained.
It was a finer cordial than their own, so they sat drinking them turn about, and watching the sun set, and chatting spasmodically, till it grew too dark to do more than sit still with safety. They were by no means drunk, but the spirits had made them heavy, and when John Drillot solemnly suggested that they should keep watch about, Peter Vaudin as solemnly agreed, and offered to take first duty.
The shrunken yellow face wore the gaunt eager look of one who had died the slow death of starvation. It seemed to be trying to get at them to bite and rend them. Peter Vaudin was the first to climb the wall behind him, but the rest were close at his heels, and hustled him up through the crack under the slab. Peter struck down towards the landing-place the moment he had wriggled through.
They had clambered over the great wall more than once before Vaudin said: "G'zamin, John, I wonder if there's any holes here big enough to take a man?" "He'd have to be a little one, and this Gard's not that," and they stood looking at the wall. "'Sides, them rocks lie on the rock itself, and there's no depth to them."
"What have you done then, out there, Philip Vaudin?" she cried, as his boat's nose grated on the shingle. "Pardi, ma garche, we have done nothing." "But the shooting?" "Some one shot at the shelter to see if he was inside, and the rest shot because they thought there must be something to shoot at." "And you have not got him?" asked another disappointedly. "Never even seen him." "Ah ba!"
"Either he's gone or he's under cover, though, ma fé, I don't know where he'd find it on L'Etat," and Nance's heart beat hopefully. "However, John Drillot and Peter Vaudin are stopping the night in case he is still there and ventures out of his hole," and her heart sank again, and kicked rebelliously that a man should be hunted thus, like a rabbit.
A dozen of the neighbours, who had gathered about the gate of Beaumanoir, came running to meet us the two Guilles from Dos d'Ane and Clos Bourel, Thomas De Carteret from La Vauroque, Thomas Godfray of Dixcart, and Henri Le Masurier from Grand Dixcart, Elie Guille from Le Carrefour, Jean Vaudin, and Pierre Le Feuvre, and Philippe Guille from La Genêtière.
Behind these came Pierre Le Masurier, the Sénéchal, and I can imagine how tight and grim his face would be set to a job which he did not like. For, though he was the magistrate of the Island, and held the law in his own hands, with the assistance of his two connétables, Elie Guille and Jean Vaudin, they were all just farmers like the rest.
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