them. All day long she sat in her great arm-chair by the window in her
sitting-room, with the door wide open, so that she could see all that
went on in the house and outside it; and in the sombre depths of her
great black silk sun-bonnet--long since turned by age and weather to
dusky green--her watchful eyes had in them something of the inscrutable
and menacing.

Her wants were very few, and as her income from her one-third of the
farm had far exceeded her expenses for more than twenty years, she was
reputed as rich in material matters as she undoubtedly was in
common-sense and worldly wisdom. Even young Tom was sulkily silent
before her on the rare occasions when they came into contact.

Next in the family came the nominal head of it, "Old Tom" Hamon, to
distinguish him from young Tom, his son; a rough, not ill-natured man,
until the money-getting fever seized him, since which time his
home-folks had found in him changes that did not make for their comfort.

The discovery of silver in Sark, the opening of the mines, and the
coming of the English miners--with all the very problematical benefits
of a vastly increased currency of money, and the sudden introduction of
new ideas and standards of life and living into a community which had
hitherto been contented with the order of things known to its
forefathers--these things had told upon many, but on none more than old
Tom Hamon.

Suspicious at first of the meaning and doings of these strangers, he
very soon found them advantageous. He got excellent prices for his farm
produce, and when his horses and carts were not otherwise engaged he
could always turn them to account hauling for the mines.