Le Scarabée d'or

Many years ago, I became friends with a man called William Legrand. He came from an old French family that was once very rich. But one piece of bad luck followed another, and in the end he lost almost all his money. He felt ashamed, so he left New Orleans, the city of his family, and went to live on Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, in South Carolina.

It is a very strange island. It is made of almost nothing but sea sand. It is about three miles long but never more than a quarter of a mile wide. A narrow stream of water, full of tall grass and mud, separates it from the mainland. There are no large trees. At the western end stands Fort Moultrie, with a few wooden houses for summer visitors from Charleston. Almost all the rest of the island is covered with thick, sweet-smelling bushes. They often grow fifteen or twenty feet high, and it is almost impossible to walk through them.