e benefit from.

But to these books, and to the habit of reading them aloud, which impressed
them greatly on my memory, and to my own observation of men and things and
places through the eyes which these books helped to open, and to the wise
words of my grandfather, and the quiet faithful teaching of my mother, and
to all that old Krok taught me without ever speaking one word--I know that
I owe everything, and that is why it was necessary to tell you so much
about them.

If the telling has wearied you, I am sorry. For myself, I like to think
back upon it all, and to trace the beginnings of some things of which I
have seen the endings, and of some which are not ended yet, thank God!--and
to find, in all that lies between, the signs of a Power that is beyond any
power of man's, and is, indeed, and rightly I think, beyond even the power
of any man's full understanding.

CHAPTER VI

HOW CARETTE CAME BY HER GOLDEN BRIDGE

And Carette--

I recall her in those days in a thousand different circumstances, and
always like the sunlight or the lightning, gleaming, sparkling, flashing.
For she could be as steadily radiant as the one and as unexpectedly fickle
as the other, and I do not know that I liked her any the less on that
account, though truly it made her none too easy to deal with at times. Her
quick changes and childish vagaries kept one, at all events, very much
alive and in a state of constant expectation. And whenever I think of her I
thank God for Jeanne Falla, and all that that wisest and sharpest and
tenderest of women was able to do for her.

For, you see, Carette was peculiarly circumstanced, and might have gone to
waste but for her aunt Jeanne.

Her mother died when she was six years old, after four years' life on
Brecqhou, and Carette was left to be utterly spoiled by her father and six
big brothers, wild and reckless men all of them, but all, I am sure, with
tender spots in their hearts for the lovely child who seemed so out of
place among them, though for anyone outside they had little thought or
care.

My own thoughts delight to linger back among these earlier scenes before
the more trying times came. If you will let me, I will try to picture
Carette to you as I see her in my mind's eye, and I can see her as she was
then as clearly as though it were yesterday.

I see a girl of ten, of slight, graceful figure, and of so active a nature
that if you found her quite still you feared at once that