of Jean de la Fontaine's _Fables Choisies_ in French, with
delightful pictures of all the talking beasts.

And--crowning glory from the purely literary point of view--a massive
volume of Plays by William Shakespeare, and to this was attached a history
and an inscription of which my grandfather, in his quiet way, was not a
little proud.

When the _Valentine_, East Indiaman, went ashore on Brecqhou in the great
autumn gale, the year before I was born,--that was before the Le Marchants
set themselves down there,--my grandfather was among the first to put out
to the rescue of the crew and passengers. He got across to Brecqhou at risk
of his life, and, from his knowledge of that ragged coast and its currents,
managed to float a line down to the sinking ship by means of which every
man got safe ashore. There was among them a rich merchant of London, a Mr.
Peter Mulholland, and he would have done much for the man who had saved all
their lives.

"I have done naught more than my duty," said my grandfather, and would
accept nothing.

But Mr. Mulholland stopped with him for some days, while such of the cargo
as had floated was being gathered from the shores--and, truth to tell, from
the houses--of Sercq, that is to say some portion of it, for some went
down with the ship, and in some of the houses there are silken hangings to
this day. And the rich Englishman came to know what manner of man my
grandfather was and his tastes, and some time after he had gone there came
one day a great parcel by the Guernsey cutter, addressed to my grandfather,
and in it was that splendid book of Shakespeare's Plays which, after his
Bible, became his greatest delight. An inscription, too, which he read
religiously every time he opened the book, though he must have known every
curl of every letter by heart.

It was a wonderful book, even to look at. When I grew learned enough to
read it aloud to him and my mother and Krok of a winter's night, I came by
degrees, though not by any means at first, to understand what a very
wonderful book it was.

When one's reading is limited to four books it is well that they should be
good books. Every one of those books I read through aloud from beginning to
end, not once, but many times, except indeed the long lists of names in the
Bible, which my grandfather said were of no profit to us, and some other
portions which he said were beyond me, and which I therefore made a point
of reading to myself, but got littl