dog's, and that was perhaps because he could not speak and
tried to tell you things with them. At times, when he could not make you
understand, they were full of a straining anxiety, the painful striving of
a dumb soul for utterance, which was very pitiful.

I remember very well quite breaking down once, when I was a very little
fellow and was doing my best to explain something I wanted and could not
make him understand. In my haste I had probably begun in the middle and
left him to guess the beginning. Something I had certainly left out, for
all I could get from Krok was puzzled shakes of the head and anxious
snappings of the bewildered brown eyes.

"Oh, Krok, what a stupid, stupid man you are!" I cried at last, and I can
see now the sudden pained pinching of the hairy face and the welling tears
in the troubled brown eyes.

I flung my little arms half round his big neck and hugged myself tight to
him, crying, "Oh, Krok, I love you!" and he fondled me and patted me and
soothed me, and our discussion was forgotten. And after that, boy as I
was, and as wild and thoughtless as most, I do not think I ever wounded
Krok's soul again, for it was like striking a faithful dog or a horse that
was doing his best.

But better times came--to Krok, at all events--when my mother began to
teach me my letters.

That was in the short winter days and long evenings, when all the west was
a shrieking black fury, out of which hurtled blasts so overpowering that
you could lean up against them as against a wall, and with no more fear of
falling, and the roar of great waters was never out of our ears.

In the daytime I would creep to the edge of the cliff, and lie flat behind
a boulder, and watch by the hour the huge white waves as they swept round
the Moie de Batarde and came ripping along the ragged side of Brecqhou like
furious white comets, and hurled themselves in thunder on our Moie de
Mouton and Tintageu. Then the great granite cliffs and our house up above
shook with their pounding, and Port a la Jument and Pegane Bay were all
aboil with beaten froth, and the salt spume came flying over my head in
great sticky gouts, and whirled away among the seagulls feeding in the
fields behind. When gale and tide played the same way, the mighty strife
between the incoming waves and the Race of the Gouliot passage was a thing
to be seen. For the waves that had raced over a thousand miles of sea split
on the point of Brecqhou, and those that took