“I have had a light fixed there for the benefit or the fishermen,” he said, “a light which I work from my own dynamo.  Between where we are sitting now and there—­only a little way out to sea—­is a jagged cluster of cruel rocks.  You can see them if you care to swim out in calm weather.  Fishermen who tried to come in by night were often trapped there and, in a rough sea, drowned.  That is why I had that pillar of light built.  On stormy nights it shows the exact entrance to the water causeway.”

“Very kind of you indeed,” Hamel remarked, “very benevolent.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“So few people have any real feeling for sailors,” he continued.  “The fishermen around here are certainly rather a casual class.  Do you know that there is scarcely one of them who can swim?  There isn’t one of them who isn’t too lazy to learn even the simplest stroke.  My brother used to say—­dear Gerald—­that it served them right if they were drowned.  I have never been able to feel like that, Mr. Hamel.  Life is such a wonderful thing.  One night,” he went on, dropping his voice and leaning a little forward in his carriage—­“it was just before, or was it just after I had fixed that light—­I was down here one dark winter night.  There was a great north wind and a huge sea running.  It was as black as pitch, but I heard a boat making for St. David’s causeway strike on those rocks just hidden in front there.  I heard those fishermen shriek as they went under.  I heard their shouts for help, I heard their death cries.  Very terrible, Mr. Hamel!  Very terrible!”

Hamel looked at the speaker curiously.  Mr. Fentolin seemed absorbed in his subject.  He had spoken with relish, as one who loves the things he speaks about.  Quite unaccountably, Hamel found himself shivering.

“It was their mother,” Mr. Fentolin continued, leaning again a little forward in his chair, “their mother whom I saw pass along the beach just now—­a widow, too, poor thing.  She comes here often—­a morbid taste.  She spoke to you, I think?”

“She spoke to me strangely,” Hamel admitted.  “She gave me the impression of a woman whose brain had been turned with grief.”

“Too true,” Mr. Fentolin sighed.  “The poor creature!  I offered her a small pension, but she would have none of it.  A superior woman in her way once, filled now with queer fancies,” he went on, eyeing Hamel steadily,—­“the very strangest fancies.  She spends her life prowling about here.  No one in the village even knows how she lives.  Did she speak of me, by-the-by?”

“She spoke of you as being a very kind-hearted man.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“The poor creature!  Well, well, let us revert to the object of your coming here.  Do you really wish to occupy this little shanty, Mr. Hamel?”