land at a glance, and,
boy as I was, it impressed me deeply and made me swell with pride. For, you
see, thanks to my grandfather and my mother and Krok, my eyes were opening,
even then, to the wonders and beauties among which I lived.

I turned at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the
breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the
ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre
of the Island. And I stared hard at it, for I had never seen the like
before.

It was not like our Sercq houses, granite-built, thick-walled, low in the
sides and high in the roof. It stood facing Sercq--that is, with its back
to the south and west--and the far end of it seemed to start out of the
ground and come sloping up to the front, till, above the doorway, it was
perhaps ten feet high. As a matter of fact cunning advantage had been taken
of a dip in the ground, and the house, built against the inside of the
hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter
gales from the south-west to lay hold of. The wildest wind that ever blew
leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but
never struck down at the squat gray house below. It was a good-sized house,
wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it
looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable. Coming
towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had run head on
into the hollow and sunk partly into the ground, leaving her stern high and
dry. For the front was in fact built up of fragments of an East Indiaman,
and the windows were her bulging stern windows, carved and ornamented,
though now all weathered to an ashen gray, and on each side of the doorway
ran a stout carved wooden railing which had come from a ship's poop.

When I had done staring at all this, I went rather doubtfully to the door,
with my eyes playing about all round, for the Le Marchants, as I have said,
did not favour visitors, and I was not sure of my welcome.

There seemed no one about, however, and at last I summoned courage to
knock gently on the door, which was of thick, heavy wood of a kind quite
new to me, and had once been polished.

"Hello, then! Who's there?" said a voice inside.

I waited, but no one came. It was no good talking through a door, so I
lifted the latch doubtfully and put in my head.

It was a large wide room, lar