"That's it! Gad'rabotin--the wheel of fire'll turn him back to a hag
again!"

The little gentleman protested, but they seized him and dragged him from
the steps. Tossed like a ball, so light was he, he grasped the gold-
headed cane as one might cling to life, and declared that he was no
witch, but a poor French exile, arrested the night before for being
abroad after nine o'clock, against the orders of the Royal Court.

Many of the crowd knew him well enough by sight, but they were too
delirious to act with intelligence now. The dark cloud was lifting a
little from the sun, and dread of the Judgment Day was declining; but as
the pendulum swung back towards normal life again, it carried with it the
one virulent and common prejudice of the country--radical hatred of the
French--which often slumbered but never died.

The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity
with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of
an ormer. A potato-digger from Grouville parish struck at his head with
a hoe, for the Granvillais had crossed the strait to the island the year
before, to work in the harvest fields for a lesser wage than the
Jersiais, and this little French gentleman must be held responsible for
that. The weapon missed the Chevalier, but laid low a centenier, who,
though a municipal officer, had in the excitement lost his head like his
neighbours. This but increased the rage against the foreigner, and was
another crime to lay to his charge. A smuggler thereupon kicked him in
the side.

At that moment there came a cry of indignation from a girl at an upper
window of the Place. The Chevalier evidently knew her, for even in his