. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something
solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past
them and disappeared along that knife-edge of a dancing path.

"Come on!" said the boy,--the first words he had spoken.

But the preventive man's eyes were still fixed in horror on the place where
the girl had vanished.

"Come on!" said the boy again, and shook himself free, and went on along
the path.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked,--a shadow in the mist.

But the preventive man was feeling cautiously backwards for solid rock.

"Then I can't show you the Boutiques," said the boy, and passed out of
sight into the mist.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW I WENT THE FIRST TIME TO BRECQHOU

Are the later days ever quite as full of the brightness and joy of life as
the earlier ones? Wider, and deeper, and fuller both of joys and sorrows
they are, but the higher lights hold also the darker shadows, and
experience teaches, as Jeanne Falla used to say--"N'y a pas de rue sans
but." Neither lights nor shadows last, and the only thing one may count
upon with absolute certainty is the certainty of change.

But in the earlier days one's horizon is limited, and so long as it is
clear and bright one does not trouble about possible storms;--wherein, I
take it, the spirit of childhood is wiser than the spirit of the grown,
until the latter learn that wisdom which men like my grandfather call
faith, and so draw near again to the trustful simplicity of the earlier
days.

Altogether bright and very clear are my recollections of those days when
Carette and I, and Krok whenever he could manage it, roamed about that
western coast of our little Island, till we knew every rock and stone, and
every nook and cranny of the beetling cliffs, and were on such friendly
terms with the very gulls and cormorants that we knew many of them by
sight, and were on visiting terms, so to speak, though perhaps never very
acceptable visitors, among their homes and families.

Krok knew it all like a book, only better; for actual books were of late
acquaintance with him, and these other things he had studied, in his way,
for half his life.

In the hardest working life there are always off times, and Krok's Sundays,
outside the simple necessities of farm life, had always been his own. His
one enjoyment had been to scramble and poke and peer--without knowledge,
indeed, or even understanding, save such as came of absorbed watch