"He makes Clameur, George," said Philip Tanquerel remonstratively. "He may make fifty Clameurs for me. Let him go to the Senechal and the Greffier and lay the matter before them. He's not coming in here as long as I've got a fist to lift against him." "You refuse?" said Martel blackly. "You had better go to the Greffier," said Philip Carre. "The Court will have to decide it." "It is my house." "I'm in charge of it, and I won't give it up till the Senechal tells me to. So there!" said Hamon. Martel turned on his heel and walked away, and the three stood looking after him. "I'm not sure--" began Tanquerel, in his slow drawling way. "You're only a witness, anyway, Philip," said Hamon. "I'm the oppressor, and if he comes again I'll give him some more of what he had last night. He may Haro till he's hoarse, for me. Till the Senechal bids me go, I stop here;" and Tanquerel shrugged his shoulders and went off down the slope to his pots. "More trouble," said Carre gloomily. "We'll meet it--with our fists," said Hamon cheerfully. "M. le Senechal is not going to be browbeaten by a man he's flung out of the Island." And so it turned out. The cutter had brought M. Le Masurier a letter from the authorities in Guernsey which pleased him not at all. It informed him that Martel, having married into Sercq and settled on Sercq, belonged to Sercq, and they would have none of him, and were accordingly sending him home again. When Martel appeared to lodge his complaint, and claim the old Island right to cessation of oppression and trial of his cause, M. le Senechal was prepared for him. It was not the man's fault that he was back on their hands, and he said nothing about that. As to his complaint, however, he drew a rigid line between the past and the future. In a word, he declined to interfere in the matter of the cottage until the case should be tried and the Court should give its judgment. "Hamon must not, of course, interfere with you any further. But neither must you interfere with him," said the wise man. "If you should do so he retains the right that every man has of defending himself, and will doubtless exercise it." At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold. He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment which his cut lips did not in reality permit. He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a sarcastic grunt for his pains. He tried to get a lodging elsewhere, but no one would receive him. He begged for food. No one would give him a crust, and everyone he asked kept a watchful eye on him until he was clear of the premises. He pulled some green corn, and husked it between his hands, and tried to satisfy his complaining stomach with that and half-ripe blackberries.