His name was Johnnie Vautrin, and, as far as Graeme could make out, he was about eight years old in actual years, but aged beyond belief in black arts which made him a terror to his kind.  And his familiar, in the person of an enormous black cat, which came and went, was named Marielihou.

Johnnie, and presumably Marielihou, lived with an ancient dame who was held by some to be their great-grandmother, and by some to be Marielihou herself.  This was a moot and much-discussed point among the neighbours.  What was beyond dispute was that Johnnie was said to be grievously maltreated by her at times, and to lead her a deuce of a life, and she him.  The family came originally from Guernsey and had married into Sark, and, for this and other reasons, was still looked askance at by the neighbours.

Both Johnnie and his ancient relative were popularly—­or unpopularly—­credited with powers of mischief which secured them immunities and privileges beyond the common and not a little prudently concealed dislike.

Old Mrs. Vautrin could put the evil eye on her neighbours’ cows and stop their milk, on their churns and stop their butter, on their kettles and stop their boiling.

Johnnie claimed equal powers, but excelled in forecasts of bad weather and ill luck and evil generally, and, since there was no end to his prognostications, they occasionally came true, and when they did he exulted greatly and let no one forget it.

He had a long, humorously snaky, little face, a deep sepulchral voice, which broke into squeaks in moments of excitement, and curious black eyes with apparently no pupils—­little glittering black wells of ill intent, with which he cowed dogs and set small children screaming and grown ones swearing.  His little body was as malformed as his twisted little soul, and he generally sat in the hedge taking his pleasure off the passers-by, much to their discomfort.

Johnnie also saw ghosts, or said he did, which came to much the same thing since none could prove to the contrary.  He had even slept one night in an outhouse up at the Seigneurie, and had carefully locked the door, and so the little old lady in white, who only appears to those who lock their doors of a night, came to him, and, according to Johnnie, they carried on a long and edifying conversation to their mutual satisfaction.

He had also a cheerful habit of visiting sick folks and telling them he had seen their spirits in the lanes at night, and so they might just as well give up all hopes of getting better.  On payment of a small fee, however, he was at times, according to his humour, willing to admit that it might have been somebody else’s ghost he had seen, but in either case his visitations tended to cheerfulness in none but himself.  He was great on the meanings—­dismal ones mostly—­of flights of birds and falling stars and fallen twigs.  And he had been known to throw a branch of hawthorn into a house which had incurred his displeasure.