I regretted that I could not spend my life in tending the vineyards and
the harvests, the occupations of several of my ancestors. Such a life
seemed a much more desirable one to me than my own which was passed in a
house in town.

The stories of the Island that my grandmother and aunt Claire related to
me were generally of the happenings of their own childhood, a childhood
that seemed so very far away that to me it had no more reality than a
dream.

There were stories of grandfathers, long dead; of great-uncles whom I
had never known, dead also for many years. When my aunt told me their
names and described them to me I would abandon myself to reverie. There
was in particular a grandfather Samuel who had preached at the time of
the religious persecution, whom I thought an extraordinarily interesting
person.

I did not care whether the stories were different or not, and I would
ask for the same ones over and over. Often they told me stories of
journeys they had taken on the little donkeys that played such an
important part in the lives of the people of St. Pierre. They would ride
upon them to visit distant properties and vineyards; to get to these
it was often necessary to travel along the sands of the Long-Beach, and
sometimes of an evening during these expeditions terrible storms would
burst upon the travellers and compel them to take shelter for the night
in the inns and farmhouses.

And as I sat in the darkness that no longer had terrors for me, my
imagination busy with the things and peoples of other days, tinkle,