He knew all that wonderful west coast of our Island as well as he knew the fingers of his hand, and before long the ground all round the house was strewn about with smooth flat stones on which were scratched the letters of the alphabet, which presently, according to the pace of my studies indoors, began to arrange themselves into words, and so I was encompassed with learning, inside and out, as it were, and sucked it in whether I would or no.

Well do I remember the puzzlement in old Krok’s face when the mischief that dwells in every boy set me to changing the proper order of his stones, and the eagerness with which he awaited the evening lesson to compare the new wrong order of things with his recollections of the original correct one, and then the mild look of reproachful enquiry he would turn upon me.

But my mother, catching me at it one day, sharply forbade me meddling with Krok’s studies, and showed me the smallness of it, and I never touched one of his stones again.

Both my mother and my grandfather could read and speak English, in addition to the Norman-French which was the root of our Island tongue, and that was something of a distinction in those days.  He had learned it, perforce, during his early voyagings.  He had been twice round the world, both times on English ships, and he was the kind of man, steady, quiet, thoughtful, to miss no opportunities of self-improvement, though I do not think there ever can have been a man less desirous of gain.  His wants were very few, and so long as the farm and the fishing provided us all with a sufficient living, he was satisfied and grateful.  He saw his neighbours waxing fat all about him, in pursuits which he would have starved sooner than set his hand to.  To them, and according to Island standards, these things might be right or wrong, but to him, and for himself, he had no doubts whatever in the matter.

You see, long ago, in Guernsey, he had come across Master Claude Gray, the Quaker preacher, and had been greatly drawn to him and the simple high-life he proclaimed.  Frequently, on still Sabbath mornings, he would put off in his boat, and, if the wind did not serve, would pull all the way to Peter Port, a good fourteen miles there and back, for the purpose of meeting his friend, and looked on it as a high privilege.

When, at times, he took me with him, I, too, looked on it as a mighty privilege; for Peter Port, even on a Sabbath morning, was, to a boy whose life was spent within the shadow of the Autelets, so to speak, a great and bustling city, full of people and houses and mysteries, and of course of wickedness, all of which excited my liveliest imaginings.

In the evening we would pull back, or run before the west wind if it served, and my grandfather would thoughtfully con over the gains of the day as another might tell the profits of his trading.  Master Claude Gray was a man of parts, well read, an Englishman, and it was doubtless from him that my grandfather drew some of that love of books which distinguished him above any man I ever knew on Sercq, not excepting even the Seigneur, or the Senechal, or the Schoolmaster, or the Parson.