She hurled herself at Tom as he gloated over his enjoyment, and would
have asked nothing better than to treat him as he was treating the
kittens--righteous retribution in her case, not enjoyment!--but he was
too strong for her. He simply kicked out behind, and before she could
get up had thrust one of his half-drowned victims into the neck of her
frock, and the clammy-dead feel of it and its pitiful screaming set her
shuddering for months whenever she thought of it.

But now and again her tormentor overpassed the bounds and got his
reward--to Nance's immediate satisfaction but subsequent increased
tribulation. For whenever he got a thrashing on her account he never
failed to pay her out in the smaller change of persecution which never
came to light.

On a pitch-dark, starless night, the high-hedged--and in places
deep-sunk--lanes of Little Sark are as black as the inside of an ebony
ruler.

When the moon bathes sea and land in a flood of shimmering silver, or on
a clear night of stars--and the stars in Sark, you must know, shine
infinitely larger and closer and brighter than in most other places--the
darkness below is lifted somewhat by reason of the majestic width and
height of the glittering dome above. But when moon and stars alike are
wanting, then the darkness of a Sark lane is a thing to be felt, and--if
you should happen to be a little girl of eight, with a large imagination
and sharp ears that have picked up fearsome stories of witches and
ghosts and evil spirits--to be mortally feared.

Tom had a wholesome dread of such things himself. But the fear of
fourteen, in a great strong body and no heavenly spark of imagination,