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.
HAVRE GOSSELIN, and "The Cottage above the Chasm," which Paul Martel built for Rachel Carré.
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 had to suffer in order to teach them that lesson.