bring her.

For money, simply as money, I had no craving whatever. For the wife it
might help me to, and the security and comfort it might bring to her, I
desired it ardently, and my thoughts were much exercised as to how to
arrive at it in sufficiency. I found myself at one of the great cross-roads
of life, where, I suppose, most men find themselves at one time or another.
I knew that much--to me, perhaps, everything--must depend on how I chose
now, and I spent much time wandering in lonely places, and lying among the
gorse cushions or in the short grass of the headlands, thinking of Carette
and trying to see my way to her.

There were open to us all, in those days, four ways of life--more, maybe,
if one had gone seeking them, but these four right to our hands.

I could ship again in the trading line,--and some time, a very long way
ahead, I might come to the command of a ship, if I escaped the perils of
the sea till that time came. But I could not see Carette very clearly in
that line of life.

I could join a King's ship, and go fight the Frenchmen and all the others
who were sometimes on our side and sometimes against us. But I could not
see Carette at all in that line of life.

I could settle down to the quiet farmer-fisherman life on Sercq, as my
grandfather had done with great contentment. But I was not my grandfather,
and he was one in a thousand, and he had never had to win Carette.

And, lastly,--I could join my fellows in the smuggling or privateering
lines, in which some of them, especially the Guernsey men, were waxing
mightily fat and prosperous.

For reasons which I did not then understand, but which I do now, since I
learned about my father, my mother's face was set dead against the
free-trading. And so I came to great consideration of the privateering
business and was drawn to it more and more. The risks were greater,
perhaps, even than on the King's ships, since the privateer hunts alone and
may fall easy prey to larger force. But the returns were also very much
greater, and the life more reasonable, for on the King's ships the
discipline was said to be little short of tyranny at times, and hardly to
be endured by free men.

When, as the result of long turning over of the matter in my own mind, I
had decided that the way to Carette lay through the privateering, I sought
confirmation of my idea in several likely quarters before broaching it at
home.

"Ah then, Phil, my boy! Come in and sit down