I looked across at Brecqhou as I came in sight of the western waters, and said to myself, “In an hour I will be over there to see Carette,” and my heart leaped with joy.  Away up towards Rondellerie I thought I saw my grandfather in the fields.  I jumped over the green bank and came down to the house through the orchard.  The door stood wide and I went in.  My mother looked up in quick surprise at a visitor at so unusual an hour, and in a moment she was on my neck.

“My boy! my boy!” she cried.  “Now God be praised!” and sobbed and strained me to her, and I felt all her prayers thrill through her arms into my own heart.

It was quite a while before we could settle to reasonable talk, for, in spite of her repeated assertions that she had never really given me up, she could still hardly realise that I was truly alive and come back to her, and every other minute she must fling her arms round my neck to make sure.

Then up she jumped and set food before me, in quantity equal almost to the time I had been away, as though she feared I had eaten nothing since I left home.  And I had an appetite that almost justified her, for the night had been a wasteful one.

And while I ate, I told her briefly where I had been, and what had kept me so long, and touched but lightly on the matter of Torode, for I saw that was not what she would care to hear.

“And Carette?” I asked.  “I know she is well, for Aunt Jeanne told me so;” and she looked up quickly, and I hastened to add,—­“We had to pass Beaumanoir, and I left Helier Le Marchant there.  I only stopped long enough to ask if you were all right—­and Carette.”  If I had told her I had kissed Aunt Jeanne before herself, I really believe she would have felt hurt, though I had never thought of it so when I did it.

But her nature was too sweet, and her heart too full of gratitude, to allow long harbourage to any such thoughts.

“Carette,” she said with a smile, “has been much with me.  But”—­and her face saddened—­“you do not know what has befallen them.”

“Helier feared they were wiped out.”

“Almost.  Monsieur Le Marchant and Martin, the eldest boy, got home sorely wounded.  They are still there on Brecqhou, and Carette is nursing them back to life.  But I think”—­and there was a touch of pride in her pleasure at it—­“she has been here every time she has come across to see Jeanne Falla.  She is a good girl ...and I think she is prettier than ever.”  But for myself I thought that was perhaps because she saw her with new eyes.

“And my grandfather?—­and Krok?”

“Both well, only much troubled about you.  I do not think they ever expected to see you again, my boy.  Your grandfather has blamed himself, I think, for ever letting you go, and it has aged him.  Krok gave you up too, I think, but he has never ceased to keep an eye on Carette for you.  I doubt if he has missed going over to Brecqhou any single day, except when the weather made it quite impossible.”