But even George Hamon admits that Paul Martel was an unusually good-looking
fellow, with very attractive manners when he chose, and a knowledge of the
world and its ways, and of men and women, beyond the ordinary, and he won
Rachel Carré's heart against her head and in the teeth of her father's
opposition.

Perhaps if her mother had been alive things might have been different. But
she died when Rachel was eight years old, and her father was much away at
the fishing, for the farm was poorer then than it became afterwards, and
Martel found his opportunities and turned them to account.

I do not pretend to understand fully how it came about--beyond the fact
that the little god of love goes about his work blindfold, and that women
do the most unaccountable things at times. Even in the most momentous
matters they are capable of the most grievous mistakes, though, on the
other hand, that same heart instinct also leads them at times to wisdom
beyond the gauging of man's intelligence. A man reasons and keeps tight
hand on his feelings; a woman feels and knows; and sometimes a leap in the
dark lands one safely, and sometimes not.

To make a long story short, however, Paul Martel and Rachel Carré were
married, to the great surprise of all Rachel's friends and to the great
grief of her father.

Martel built a little cottage at the head of the chasm which drops into
Havre Gosselin, and her father, Philip Carré, lived lonely on his little
farm of Belfontaine, by Port à la Jument, with no companion but his dumb
man Krok.