He made as though he would go in without speaking to the others, but George Hamon planted himself in the doorway with a curt, “No, you don’t!”

“You refuse to let me into my own house?”

“Yes, I do.”

“By what right?”

“By this!” said Hamon, raising his fist.  “If you want any more of it you’ve only to say so.  You’re outcast.  You’ve no rights here.  Get away!”

“I claim my rights,” said Martel through his teeth, and fell suddenly to his knees, and cried, “Haro!  Haro!  Haro! a l’aide mon prince!  On me fait tort.”

The three men looked doubtfully at one another for a moment, for this old final appeal to a higher tribunal, in the name of Rollo, the first old Norseman Duke, dead though he was this nine hundred years, was still the law of the Islands and not to be infringed with impunity.

All the same, when the other sprang up and would have passed into the cottage, Hamon declined to move, and when Martel persisted, he struck at him with his fist, and it looked as though the fight were to be renewed.

“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.