And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.

The day before Antoine was born, his father had been drowned in a storm
which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his
mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe,
and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child,
and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him,
as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and
his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright
gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood,
pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks,
and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green
anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never
touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves directly, packing
their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the
prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for
they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under
a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across
the pool that you could not see them go.

Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones,
such as that which dwelt in the great mushroom stone out yonder to sea,
which was very powerful and wicked, so that the stone, being in fear,
always trembled, yet could not fall, because the evil spirit would not
let it: and then there were others which haunted the little valley
beyond Esquinel Point, where you must not go after dark, for the spirits
took the form of Little Men, who had the power to send astray the wits
of any that met them. Antoine feared those spirits more than any of the
others: they were so cunning and wanted to do you harm on purpose: and
when he went with his grandmother to pray in the little chapel on the