he sea, to pass from the heroic into the
patriarchal stage, to sink into the condition of a harmless, worthy old
fellow.

Happily his rheumatism attacks happened at the period when he had
secured a comfortable competency. These two consequences of labour are
natural companions. At the moment when men become rich, how often comes
paralysis--the sorrowful crowning of a laborious life!

Old and weary men say among themselves, "Let us rest and enjoy life."

The population of islands like Guernsey is composed of men who have
passed their lives in going about their little fields or in sailing
round the world. These are the two classes of the labouring people; the
labourers on the land, and the toilers of the sea. Mess Lethierry was of
the latter class; he had had a life of hard work. He had been upon the
continent; was for some time a ship carpenter at Rochefort, and
afterwards at Cette. We have just spoken of sailing round the world; he
had made the circuit of all France, getting work as a journeyman
carpenter; and had been employed at the great salt works of
Franche-Comte. Though a humble man, he had led a life of adventure. In
France he had learned to read, to think, to have a will of his own. He
had had a hand in many things, and in all he had done had kept a
character for probity. At bottom, however, he was simply a sailor. The
water was his element; he used to say that he lived with the fish when
really at home. In short, his whole existence, except two or three
years, had been devoted to the ocean. Flung into the water, as he said,
he had navigated the great oceans both of the Atlantic and the Pacific,
but he preferred the Channel. He used to exclaim enthusiastically, "That
is the sea for a rough time of it!" He was born at sea, and at sea would
have preferred to end his days. After sailing several times round the
world, and seeing most countries, he had returned to Guernsey, and never
permanently left the island again. Henceforth his great voyages were to
Granville and St. Malo.

Mess Lethierry was a Guernsey man--that peculiar amalgamation of
Frenchman and Norman, or rather English. He had within himself this
quadruple extraction, merged and almost lost in that far wider country,
the ocean. Throughout his life and wheresoever he went, he had preserved
the habits of a Norman fisherman.

All this, however, did not prevent his looking now and then into some
old book; of taking pleasure in reading, in knowing the na