CHAPTER VIII.
HOW TOM WANTED TO BUT DIDN'T DARE Before the six weeks allowed by Sark law for the retraiting of the property had expired, Grannie and Mrs.Hamon put in their claims, and it became generally known that they would become the new owners of La Closerie, in place of John Guille.
When the rumour at length reached Tom's ears, he, not unnaturally perhaps, set down the whole matter as a plot to oust him from his heritage and put Nance and Bernel in his place.
So his anger grew, and he was powerless.

And the impotence of an angry man may lead him into gruesome paths.

Smouldering fires burst out at times into devastating flames, and maddened bulls put down their heads and charge regardless of consequences.
When Tom Hamon asked Peter Mauger to lend him his gun to go rabbit-shooting one night, Peter, if he had been a thoughtful man, would have declined.
But Peter was above all things easy-going, and anything but thoughtful of such matters as surged gloomily in Tom's angry head, and he lent him his gun as a matter of course.
And Tom went off across the Coupee into Little Sark, nursing his black devil and thinking vaguely and gloomily of the things he would like to do.

For to rob a man of his rights in this fashion was past a man's bearing, and if he was to be ruined for the sake of that solemn-faced slip of a Nance and that young limb of a Bernel, he might as well take payment for it all, and cut their crowing, and give them something to remember him by.
He had no very definite intentions.

His mind was a chaos of whirling black furies.