and beautiful woman, and--we grew a little apart.

That was inevitable, I suppose, and in the natural course of things, for
even two saplings planted side by side will, as they grow into trees, be
wider apart at the top than they are down below. And perhaps it is right,
for if they grew too close together both would suffer. Growth needs space
for full expansion if it is not to be lop-sided. And boy and girl days
cannot last for ever.

Those ten years taught me much--almost all that I ever learned, until the
bitterer experiences of life brought it all to the test, and sifted out
the chaff, and left me knowledge of the grain.

And once again I would say that to my mother, Rachel Carre, and to my
grandfather and Krok, and to William Shakespeare and John Bunyan and to my
grandfather's great Bible, I owe in the first place all that I know. All
those books he made me read very thoroughly, and parts of them over and
over again, till I knew them almost by heart. And at the time I cannot say
that this was much to my liking, but later, when I came to understand
better what I read, no urging was needed, for they were our only books,
except Foxe's _Martyrs_, in which I never found any very great enjoyment,
though Krok revelled in it. And I suppose that a man might pass through
life, and bear himself well in it, and never feel lonely, with those books
for his companions.

I should not, however, omit mention of M. Rousselot, the schoolmaster, who
took a liking to me because of the diligence which was at first none of my
own, but only the outward showing of my mother's and grandfather's strict
oversight. But, as liking begets liking, I came to diligence for M.
Rousselot's sake also, and finally for the sake of learning itself. And
also I learned no little from Mistress Jeanne Falla, who had the wisest
head and the sharpest tongue and the kindest heart in all Sercq.

But I was never a bookworm, though the love of knowledge and the special
love of those books I have named is with me yet.

"Whatever you come to be, Phil, though it be only a farmer-fisherman, you
will be all the better man and the happier for knowing all you can," my
grandfather would say to me, when we grew into closer fellowship with my
growing years. "It is not what a man is in position but what he is in
himself that makes for his happiness. And I think," he would add
thoughtfully, "that the more a man understands of life and the more he
thinks upon it--in fact, t