ather, and Krok, and George Hamon, and Jeanne Falla, are as bright
and rosy as the dawns and sunsets of those earlier days.

All these seem to have been with me from the very beginning. They made up
my little world, and Carette was the sunlight,--and occasionally the
lightning,--and the moonlight was my mother, and the bright stars were
Jeanne Falla and George Hamon, while my grandfather was a benevolent power,
always kind but rather far above me, and Krok was a mystery man, dearly
loved, but held in something of awe by reason of his strange affliction.

For Krok could hear and understand all that was said to him, even in our
Island tongue which was not native to him, but he had no speech. The story
ran that he had been picked off a piece of wreckage, somewhere off the
North African coast, by the ship in which my grandfather made his last
voyage, very many years ago. He was very intelligent and quick of hearing,
but dumb, and it was said that he had been captured by Algerine pirates
when a boy and had his tongue cut out by them. This, however, I was in a
position to contradict, for I had once got a glimpse of Krok's tongue and
so knew that he had one, though his face was so covered with hair that one
might have doubted almost if he even had a mouth.

He was said to be Spanish. He was said to be Scotch. Wherever he was born,
he was by nature an honest man and faithful as a dog. My grandfather had
taken a liking to him, and when he quitted the sea Krok followed him, and
became his man and served him faithfully. He could neither read nor write
at that time, and his only vocal expression was a hoarse croak like the
cawing of a crow, and this, combined with ample play of head and hand and
facial expression and hieroglyphic gesture, formed his only means of
communication with his surroundings.

The sailors called him Krok, from the sound he made when he tried to speak,
and Krok he remained. In moments of intense excitement he was said to have
delivered himself of the word "Gug" also, but doubts were cast upon this.
He was of a placid and obliging nature, a diligent and trustworthy worker,
and on the whole a cheerful companion with whom one could never fall
out--by word of mouth, at all events.

He was short and broad but very powerful, and his face, where it was not
covered with hair, was seamed and meshed with little wrinkles, maybe from
pinching it up in the glare of the sun as a boy. His eyes were brown and
very like a