mall boy was myself, and Rachel Carre was my mother, and
Philip Carre 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.

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 Carre, 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 Carre should have
had to suffer in order to teach them that lesson.

Gr-r-r! but he would like to have Monsieur Martel up before him just for
ten minutes or so, with a clear field and no favour. Martel was strong and
active, it was true, but there--he was a drinker, and a Frenchman at that,
and drink doesn't run to wind, and a Frenchman doesn't run to fists. Very
well--say twenty minutes then, and if he--George Hamon--did not make
Monsieur Martel regret ever having come to Sercq, he would deserve all he
got and would take it without a murmur.

He was full of such imaginings, when at last he fell asleep, and he dreamt
that he and Martel met in a lonely place and fought. And so full of fight
was he that he rolled off the fern-bed and woke with a bump on the floor,
and regretted that it was only a dream. For he had just got Martel's head
comfortably under his left arm, and was paying him out in full for all he
had made Rachel Carre suffer, when the bump of his fall put an end to it.

The following night he fell asleep at once, tired with a long day's work in
the fields. He woke with a start about midnight, with the impression of a
sound in his ears,