As the silver-fever grew in him he became closer in his dealings both
abroad and at home. With every pound he could scrimp and save he bought
shares in the mines and believed in them absolutely. And he went on
scrimping and saving and buying shares so as to have as large a stake in
the silver future as possible.

He got no return as yet from his investment, indeed. But that would
come all right in time, and the more shares he could get hold of the
larger the ultimate return would be. And so he stinted himself and his
family, and mortgaged his future, in hopes of wealth which he would not
have known how to enjoy if he had succeeded in getting it.

So possessed was he with the desire for gain that when young Tom came
home from sea he left the farming to him, and took to the mining
himself, and worked harder than he had ever worked in his life before.

He was a sturdy, middle-sized man, with a grizzled bullet head and
rounded beard, of a dogged and pertinacious disposition, but capable,
when stirred out of his usual phlegm, of fiery outbursts which overbore
all argument and opposition. His wife died when his boy Tom was three,
and after two years of lonely discomfort he married Nancy Poidestre of
Petit Dixcart, whose people looked upon it as something of a
_mésalliance_ that she should marry out of her own country into Little
Sark.

Nancy was eminently good-looking and a notable housewife, and she went
into Tom Hamon's house of La Closerie with every hope and intention of
making him happy.