the fishing, and their visitors were few and far between.

Now that jumping small boy was myself, and Rachel Carré was my mother, and
Philip Carré was my grandfather. But what I have been telling you is only
what I learned long afterwards, when I was a grown man, and it had become
necessary for me to know these things in explanation of others.




CHAPTER III

HOW TWO FOUGHT IN THE DARK


When George Hamon told me the next part of the story of those early days,
his enjoyment in the recalling of certain parts of it was undisguised. He
told it with great gusto.

As he lay that night on the fern-bed in the cottage above the chasm, he
thought of Rachel Carré, and what might have been if Martel's father had
only been properly drowned on the Hanois instead of marrying the Guernsey
woman. Rachel and he might have come together, and he would have made her
as happy as the day was long. And now--his life was empty, and Rachel's was
broken,--and all because of this wretched half-Frenchman, with his knowing
ways and foreign beguilements. The girls had held him good-looking. Well,
yes, he was good-looking in a way, but it passed his understanding why any
Sercq girl should want to marry a foreigner while home lads were still to
be had. He did not think there would be much marrying outside the Island
for some time to come, but it was bitter hard that Rachel Carré should have