A STRANDED SHIP: A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 80, 13 December 1884, Page 4

A STRANDED SHIP: A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE.

BY L. CLARKE DAVIS.

PART 111. (Continued.) The life-boats were hurriedly run down to the shore, as quickly manned, and a dozen brawny fishermen stood by, ready to launch them when the little craft struck the bar. But she did not strike at all. She was suddenly put hard to windward, the gale caught the few yards of the niain-sail still unfurled about the peak, she obeyed tho hand at the helm, and while the oager crowd looked on and held their breath while a hundred seconds might be t jld off, the yacht lifted up her bow again, struck the crest of the last defeated breaker, plunged and rose and plunged and rose, and the next instant sailed quietly into the unruffled surface of the river. Without any seeming haste or excitement she was battened down ; after some trunks and baggage were brought up from below, her shattered sails were furled, her rigging cut away, her decks cleared, her yawl was launched, the luggage stowed into it, and then the crew and the blue-coated sailor landed. He was met by the wrecking-master, who extended his brawny hand in token of welcome and fellowship, for the old fellow had been a sailor before the other was born. "Thanks for your timely signal, Captain. The little Argo would scarcely have brought us safely to shore without it ; and in that case the golden fleece would have been altogether lost to me, I am afraid." " I dunno about that fleece, Cap'en, but I do know you've just saved your bacon, and although I say it to your face, which I shouldn't, you're a brave fellow, and I'd like to shake hands agen if you don't mind it; also, while you're here, I'd like it mightily if you'd make my house your own, just to stay at or come and go to, as you like ; a bed's better nor a hammock any time, and similarly, dry land better nor ; water; but," said the Captain, "why in I thunder did you, a peart enough sailor as I've seen to-day, run onto a lee-shore in a nor'-easter ?" "The last thing first, then, Captain. The yacht has settled six inches since she crossed that last breaker ; that strained and hammered her to death ; but she was sinking before the gale came on, and I ran on a lee-shore, thinking only of beaching her as a desperate chance for life ; just then I saw your inlet here, made for it, got my course by your signal, and here I am, and there's my hand, and I will take your bed, and again a thousand thanks to you for my safety." "You ought to thank God for it, young man ; for when the sea rose up to swallow you alive, it was His hand, not mine, that parted the watei'S and delivered you." " I do thank God," the sailor said, " with all my heart, my friend, and " Something ju=t then blanched the brave young fellow's face whiter than the threatened death out there had done. "What was it? What had stopped the ready current of his talk, cutting short his speech ? What was it that made his hand tremble up to his mouth in that weak, uncertain way? Not anything in the old Captain's manner ; not the soft, brown eyes of the girl, timidly bent upon him, not the quiet, controlled eyes of the man on whose arm she leaned. Yet, for a hurried moment, he was cowed, as no mere physical danger could have done ; he seemed to the girl to have suddenly lost his height of stature and bravery of bearing ; to shrink and tremble before the man at her Ade. She looked alternately into their faces for an answer to his curious behaviour ; but when she turned to the Professor, the usual grave, reticent smile was on his lips, and if the two men had ever met before, there was no sign of it in the Professoi's eyes, which looked dully into the eyes of the sailor, absent of meaning or recognition. When, still perplexed at the unsolved riddle, she turned again to the other man, he was shaking hands gayly enough with the old wrecking-master ; then he gave some directions quietly and coolly to the crew about his luggage and the sinking yacht. His face was turned fully toward her, and she noticed that the pallor and fright were gone from it ; that his manner was easy and possessed ; that, as he looked toward her, there was a bright, boyish smile in his eyes ; and when Captain Brown presented Mr Luke Connor to her and the Professor, the two men gravely saluted each other after the fashion of gentlemen, and she noticed the bits of talk succeeding hid nothing different in them from other bits of talk likely to chance between two intelligent persons when introduced to each other. "We must congratulate you on your escape," the Professor said. "Your vessel is sinking, I think jou told the Captain." " Yes, she leaked badly before, but that 1 ist thumping she got in the inlet was too much for her. She will be gone in an hour, if she is not already aground." " Then," said Margaret, her rare, sweet smile mocking the gravely spoken words, 11 1 am afraid the modern Jason will have all the dangers of the voyage and pursuit, without finding the treasure he seeks." Luke Connor looked far out to sea as the girl stopped speaking, as if he weighed the dangers he had passed, before he answered her. "I am not so sure of that," he said pre.ently. " The gods of to-day, I fancy, are as vigilant and strong as those elder ones ; indeed, I am not sure they are not the same, and who knows that they did not send the new Argo there, to this shore, knowing that here the modern Jason might find what he sought? Adventurers are sailing to-day over every sea in search of it ; one is hunting it in the mines of California or Australia, another in India or Japan, but everybody is hunting it somewhere. I think the golden fleece of to day U only another name for happiness, and I am as likely to find it here as elsewhere.'' The man's voice had grown low and solemn and prophetic, and the girl, noticing his changed manner, looked at him curiously. If then he had given one bold glance into the pure brown eyes before him, or had dared to cast a single admiring look at her, or at the bright masses of the golden hair waving so luxuriantly about er neck and face, she would have caught the hidden sense of his meaning, and if sho had, she would have avoided him for ever after. But his eyes did not once meet here, they being still bent far out at sea ; and the girl, too simple and true to be suepicious or to take alarm, only simply wondered where, among the melancholy groves of that grim shore, the golden prize might hang. But the Professor, quicker of thought than she, and more suspicious too, knew that Margaret had curiously attracted Luke Connor, and that the tawny hair floating about her form typified to the reckless win* Jaaatt'fcf&hled fleece.

Tho A«?o had settled at flood tide, but her dock st ill showed above tho surface ot ilio shallow rivor. "She lies safo enough there, " Luke said. "If you think her traps worth the trouble, she is yours to dismantle. Captain Bro>\n, but her hull is sprained and thumped to pieces." He looked back regretfully at tho sunken wreck. They had been good friends together, the man and his boat. If, as ho said, tho golden ileeco was only anothor name for happiness, he had sought that in many places in his yacht. They had shared a good many dangers, lived true, bravo lives together, struggling and wrestling with tempest and sea, and now the old Argo lay there in that hole of a river, sunk and worthless. It had been a better life 1 than any he knew on shore. Thai was a fever ot dissipation, a round of pleasure that was unwholosomo and vile. The only lovo ho knew thcro was the love that he had bought. The lips that kissed the puro brow of Psycho had kissed no pure lips since ; the hand made bloody on that longago commencement night had novor been clean again, he morbidly fancied. Yet in every hour of this man's plunges into vico and wretchedness, his true, nobler self cried out for something better — for tho sweet, manly life he had once known— for friendship and love. But he knew that men looked coldly on him ; that fathers of pure girls never asked him to their houses ; | that, mixed w ith the sincorest interest men \ ever showed him, there was more than onehalf morbid curiosity. He knew, when ho met his former friends face to face, that if they noticed him at all, which few did, they were quietly wondering, as they passed on their opposite way, how a murderer must feol ; what must bo the daily life of a man who has escaped hanging, or what distempered fancies of the murdered victim tortured him by nfcht. If ho could have answered them at all, he would have said that no thought of being hanged, that no ghost of the dead man who had wronged his sister, ever came to him by day or night. But while no ghost ever haunted him, sleeping or waking, the awful crime of which his soul stood guilty was like a second self, olinu-incr nin«e as his skin, urging him for ever into the Lethe of riot and dissipation. He only lived to forget, to get rid for awhile of himself ; and the pity of it all was, that under the cru&t of vice that was on it, there was a true, manly, noble self, full of generous impulses, capable of heroic achievements, worthy of good men's honour and affectionate regard ; but indeed it was true, he had buried it all very deep, so that men went on remembering his crime, after they should have forgiven and forgotten the actors in it. While the men whom he had known in that old, happier time placed a gulf, impossible to bridge over, between him and them, it was curious that women and little children, with their pure, unerring instincts, came close to and loved the man. It might have been partly his genuine, hearty manner, or his superb beauty, alive and magnetic with health and strength, or his free thought and free speech that beguiled them and won their hearts ; but \s hatever it w as, women and children had been very tender of his faults and loving of Luke Connor. As he walked beside Margaret Daunton from the beach to the farm-house, his in-.-tincts telling him how pure and gentle a woman she was, his senses showing him how beautiful and intelligent she was he felt as he had never done bofore ; his crime weighed heavily upon him, and he knew with deadly certainty that the once pw eet water? of life that he had muddied he must drink to the end ; that a pure \\ oman, saintly in thought and deed, was not for him to gather to his breast. Other men, with clean hands and unsullied name, might strive to win, and some one to marry her : but he alone was shut out and under the ban. In that same hour, if the old Argo, lying a sunken, worthless wreck in the river there, could have been made seaworthy again, he would have plunged once more into the breakers with her, no matter how the bar threatened, nor what storms prevailed or winds blew. Better the sudden death out yonder than to live to bear this girl's reproach. It was not that she had already become essential to him, but it waj natural that a man cut off from white bread for many long years should loatho the black loaf for ever held to his lips, and hunger for the other ; or that a barefooted beggar, passing the boundaries of a fair domain, should pause for awhile to behold how fair it was, and then to wish that the title to it should be made clear to him and his heirs forever ; especially natural would it seem if the beggar's tastes fitted him to enjoy such an estate. He, Luke Connor, was the man who had eaten only of the black bread of bought, vicious pleasures, whose nature cried out hungrily for better food ; he was the barefooted beggar, gazing over the wall of a beautiful domain, whose fruitful acres stretched away to the sea and sky line -a wall which ho might never cross, lest the cry of the keeper be raised against him, and he be hunted down. He felt that he was not a man while he could not say to this girl's mother, "Give me your child, for I love her." Other men might go to her, telling the reverential love they felt, but he never might. He could never do that ; his hands were bloody ; and if it were right for the State, or Justice, to tako life at all, he had no right to his life even. It had been saved, and the State, or Justice, cheated out of it by a quibble, a lawyer's shrewd eloquence, or the whim of a soft-hearted jury ; so he felt that he bore bin life even under a false pretenco, and that it had been forfeit long ago. Yet no man loved life better than he loved his. It was sweet and good to him from the rising to the setting of the sun ; and no man would have fought more desperately to preserve it, if a struggle came. But it could never be a full man's life, he thought, unless he might lovo and marry as other men could. He knew the danger before him when it was only an hour old, but he did not flee from it. Let the surly keeper come, he said ; but he would first sec the beautiful fields, the long, dim paths, the ftiendly shadows of the trees, smell the fragrance of the flowers and hear the songs of birds and plash of fountains. Let the keeper come; the beggar would have climbed the wall and seen with his own eyes how broad and fair the landscape was, and as he was turned out again to wander over the rough highways, eating his black bread, what he had .seen and heard would be a pleasant and happy memory to him for ever. So, Luke Connor resolved to linger for a day or two, with the beautiful woman, under the old wrecking-master's roof, and then ho would go back to the love that could be bought and pleasures that bury self and bring forgctfulncss. But he never would forget that he had seen Margaret Daunton, and that for a day or two he had stood up before her, accounted worthy of her regard r.nd honour. But he did not go after a day or two, nor yet after many days. He too, after long, rough years, sat down by the sweet waters and ate of the blissful lotus, which brought dreamful ease and forgetfulness of crime and trouble. He sent to town to have his horses brought; down he discarded his sailor's suit, and robed himself bravely, aa a man doca

who wishes to appear at his best in the oyes of t>ho woman ho 10/es. The story of thai old farm-house was repeating itself ah every watering-place, large and small, along the whole Atlantic coast, and at every summer retreat in mountain or valley. The old, old story, for ever beautiful and new, of two people of opposite sox coming directly to believe that " all for love, and the world well lost" is the only true religion, Margaret Daunton and Luke Connor had learned thai faith on the sands, that day by the sea, 3 think j but then they only saw as in a glass, darkly ; and now, after these many days of rides and walks and sunset wanderings they would have died at the stake foi it bravely as any bigot of the olden time for hw higher creed. This was all very bad for the grave old Professor indeed. Ho had made a terrible mistako of it. If he had only, in those old days at homo, boen loss blind, less devoted to his stupid books, less interested in his>, Groek pootry and College duties ; if ho had only loved his Hellenic heroines less, and cared more for the beautiful, loving girl whom his stupid affection called sister ! But he had been so secure in his possession of the yellow-haired little girl that he had been in no hurry to fall in love with and marry her. There, at home, his dear old mother played house - dog, keeping watch and ward at the gate, driving all poachers away ; but here, in this summer holiday, camo this barefooted beggar, Luke Connor, claiming the fair domain, and making out a good title to it, too. He know that he had only to utter one word into the girl's ear to make her send the beggar all to sea again ; to make her great, brown eyes dilate with horror ; to make her shrink appalled from his touch. But would he say it ? that was the question. What was his duty ? Was it tho devil of selfishness that tempted him to go to the girl with Luke Connor's story, or was it solely a real desire for her completcst happiness that prompted him to tell her the man was a murderer, a debauchee ? He knew the coarse delights, the vices and sloughs of vileness Connor had grovelled in for a good many years past. Was he fit to marry with such a woman as Margarot, a woman sweet and saintly as few women were ? He might let the old crime go, and bo silent about it. God know there was sufficient provocation for that, the Professor thought. He could scarcely blame the man tor that ; besides, the man was mad when he did it. But, outside of that, was Luke Connor not fit to be Margaret's husband ? — and even if he i could forget and forgive- it, would others do so ? If they over married, would not the scorn and gibe follow Margaret as surely as it had followed him ? And how could he save her at all, if he kept that old, foul tale of murder back ? He thought it over for a long time, weighing the matter coolly in his mind. If j he told her — w ell ? Then the beggar, Luke Connor, with his altogether wrecked, miserable life, would hurry back to his old existence of bought sin, aud Margaret would be glad that he had saved her from sin and ignominy of being a murderer's wife, of being the mother of a murderer's children. And for himself ? Had he a right to think of himself at all, justj ust then ? He had, for he, too, loved Margaret ; and if she married with Luke Connor, where would he carry his wreck of life ? Would his books, his j college, his Hellenic heroines supply her place in his vacant home in all the coining years ? Yet look at it as he would, the hightoned gentleman and scholar shrank from the task of telling her. He could not help thinking that tins young fellow's lines had fallen in jough places; that if he had dropped out of good men's graces, he had been sorely tempted to his fall ; and now, just as Connor's feet had touched solid ground, and his soul tasted happiness, he was about to knock it all from under his feet and send him back into the sloug'> again. The more the Professor looked a it, the more he did not like it. It was *>. mean bit of business for any man to do, he said. He began to doubt if happiness would be worth the purchase at that price — but, then, her happiness, he asked himself. Might that not be worth paying much for to secure ? He was not certain of that ; women were curious in their likes and dislikes. After all, what had Connor done to commend himself to Margaret'p favour 1 He had simply stood up like a man in an ugly swash of sea, and successfully run his yacht into smooth water. Success counts so much with women, thought the Professor. But what was ifc Margaret had said under her breath that day, while the tears wet her cheeks, as she saw Luke Connor guiding his sinking, battered boat through the breakers? Only this : "It would be so easy, if the time had come, to die by the side of a brave man like that." Ah! Professor, we old fellows, who have wives and daughters, and who have lost the fight, as our shabby coats and hair turned prematurely grey bear witness, know that success counts but little in a women's love— that her sublimest hero is the husband, lover, or son who has dared the battle, and when it was over has left the field, not victorious, but scarred and defeated. The Professor's mother was not a quick old lady, and never hurried to conclusions by too rapid a course ; yet even she, who from the hour he took Margaret Daunton home, after her father's funeral, promising to be a mother to the girl, and sealing her promise to her, as she crossed the threshold of the vacant house, with a solemn, silent prayer to God, saying, " As I deal with her, Almighty Father, so deal Thou with me, now and for ever "—even she, blind and old and simple as she was, saw that Margaret and the sailor of the Argo were a good deal together, and that Margaret showed she liked to be with him more than she had ever liked to be with the Professor. But she was not alarmed by it at all. She knew that her son would marry Margaret in his own good time — he was the sultan to command, and Margaret the handmaiden to pick up the glove, whenever he chose to cast it to her; and strangers might come and go, but Margaret would be still her son's. Of that there could be no doubt— she had settled that in her own mind, to her own intense satisfaction, long ago. Yet she was rather vexed that they had come to this public place at all ; undoubtedly it was pleasant enough ; she liked the greon fields, the woods, the cliffs, the roar of the sea, the dash of the waves, and to watch the sun fade away into the crimson tide ; and certainly the people were agreeable people ; but it was the girl's first look at the world, and young girls grew romantic by tho sea, and altogether J it might distract her fancy for awhile. Indeed the old lady thought so long about it as she dozed in her chair on the porch that Hunny afternoon that she resolved she would talk to Albert about the matter. The Professor had been out all tho afternoon for a long, quiet walk on the beach. He had wanted to be alone, where he could think over .this matter of his duty to Margaret undisturbed, and settle it. When he came back to the house, it was all settled — the Professor had decided. But his decision was a different one from that which he had adopted on the beach. In the long dim path of the woods, near the farm-house, he had come upon Margaret and Luke Connor walking slowly toward him, rapt in themselves, and unmindful of anything

outside of their own belongings ; the sod beneath his feet was soft and yielding, hib stop was noiseless ; and they, unconscious of his presence, had come so near that, without hearing their words at all, he had heard the low, sweet murmur of Maigaret a voice, and in her face he saw a light and glow of quiet happiness that he had never seen there before. Then the grave old Professor, sorely wounded, betook himself and the wreck of his life into the deeper shadow of the sombre pines, and, stealing silently away, he began again to think it over, growing suddenly conscious of something having been lost out of his life, which could never come again. He sat there a long while, until the sun had gone down behind the cliffs, leaving sea and sky filled with its crimson splendor ; then he settled it all differently again, and, finally, went slowly along to his mother's chamber, where he eat down beside her, with an awful shadow on his honest old face, which she, dull and slow as she was, quickly noted. But she began a long way off, after the fashion of mothers whose tender fingers are for ever prying down into the hurt, locked hearts of children. "You are tired, Albert," she said. " Did you walk all the way to the wreck of the Osprey ?" " All the way, mother— and back, ' he replied, slowly and wearily ; for lie knew what was coming, and wanted time. " The old ship lies high and dry, half embedded in the sands, too strained, I think, ever to sail the seas again." "And can an old ship, Albert, stranded and broken, make your face like that ? The shore lies thick with the whitening skeletons of noble ships, which you have seen a hundred times, and jested at." "I know, mother. The stories of those wrecks are such old stories now that they seem unreal as fabJes ; but the Osprey came on only yesterday, and a]b the station the wreckers showed me, lying under an old sail, the figures of the Captain and his young wife— a girl with fair hair and brown eyes, not unlike our Margaret. When they were last seen alive together upon the ship, the wreckers said they stood looking shoreward, watching the launching of the lifeboat, thinking, no doubt, that their deliverance was near at hand ; but before it left the shore, a wave swept over the ship and hurled them into the sea. A moment before, she had taken her little baby from her breast, and held it up in her arms, as if, by that means, to plead with the wreckers on the shore to hasten to their rescue. When the two bodies came ashore this morning, they were found lying but a few feet apart, with their faces turned toward each other. I said she was like our Margaret. She was ; she had the same pure face, the same sunny hair, the same dainty look of gentle womanhood. It was a sad sight, mother." It had been a sad sight, sadder to the man than he told ; for, seeing this dead semblance of th.c >yomi\n he loved lying under the coarse sail and thinking of the easy possibility of Margaret becoming Luke Connor's wife, he could not be certain that this dead woman's fate would not bo a better, kindlier fate for her ; not quite sure that it would not be better for Margaret to be washed upon the shore dead at his feet, than to marry that man. Then he had gone up from the sea, and, from the dead it had early given up, resolved to tell Margaret the worst he knew of Connor ; but when he saw them together in the woods, hearing the low, tender murmur of her voice, and seeing the bright, buoyant look in her eyes, that was there never before, he had known that already he was too late, that she already loved him and that, to have told her then, would only have made her cling the closer to the ruined man on whom the old, old curse had fallen. There was a long silence between the mother and son. She thought tenderly of the dead woman, who had taken her baby from her breast to inspire the wreckers, in : her peril of death, lying now under the coarse sail, watched over by the grim coastmen at the station. He thought of the living girl whose life, he fancied, was more completely wrecked than if she were lying dead among the sands. Mrs Daunton's next question startled him. " Do you know this young sailor, Luke Connor ?" she asked. "Do I know Luke Connor?" Daunton was thrown off guard, and parried for time. 11 You mean the man who came into the inlet with his yacht?" ( ' Yes Do you know him ?" There was a moment's pause, then the Professor looked fairly into his old mother's eyes, and did what he had never done before in all his life— he lied to her. "No mother," he said, slowly and deliberately, as if weighing the meaning of every word ; "no, mother, Ido not know him." " I wish you did, Albert ; I wish you did. lam growing old fast now. I am losing memory and sight. I like the young man, and I would rather not. Sometimes I feel as if I had seen him before, and again his name sounds familiar to me as my own, and always connected with something bad. But I never can recall where I have seen his face, nor remember how that name is associated with the record of some ugly crime in my mind. But it is, and I wish you knew him. He is a great deal with your Margaret." Without looking up at all, the Professor knew that the keen grey eyes of the old lady were watching the effect of those last words upon him. He reached out his hand tohere,and,layingone within theother,smiled as he said, "My Margaret, mother ! Why mine ? She is your daughter and my sister ; so let us speak of her as our Margaret— not mine !/ A quick shade of alarm passed over the old lady's face, despite his frank, assuring smile. "My son, have you never thought of Margaret Daunton in any way than as your cousin— as something nearer and dearer than cousin or sister — as your wife?" She was trying the honest old fellow very hard just then, but he swallowed a big lump tliat had got into his throat, and, taking the trembling old hand into his own, he again, for the second time in life, looked into his mother's face, and deliberately lied to her. He fancied it was becoming easier now, when her happiness was likewise involved in the concealment of the truth. "No, mother, I have never thought of Margaret in any other relationship than that of a sister of whom I was very fond." She went to him, and laid her old white head on his breast, with a great sense of loss and terror in her face, and in the trembling figure and voice. " Oh, my son, my son!" she cried; "it has been my one thought and plan of life. I have daily and nightly prayed God to spare my life long enough to let me see her your wife. I have prayed that he would let you two together lay me away at the last. Is there no hope for it— no chance that you will yet change your mind? She is better, nobler, more beautiful than other women are, and I have only lived in the hope to make her worthy to be my son's wife. Was all my loving labour lost ? Is there no chance, Albert 1" "No, mother," he said, "there is no chance. She has found a husband, younger and better and more suited to # her, elsewhere. She already loves this sailor, Luke Connor. I saw it in her face to-day "

She stood up and confronted him, her lips quivering, her fingers nervously winding themselves about his own. ** You do not mean," she said, her voice grown suddenly husky and broken, " you do not mean that Margaret loves that man? No, no, you fancied it. You know you are quick to fancy harm coming to her or me; but nothing so horrible as that could be true. My memory— every thing—seems going from me ; but oh, Albert, help me to remember the crime that belongs to a name like his. Margaret must be told. We must save her. We must go away from here at once ; help me to do what is right. Margaret is yours, I tell you ; I gave her to you years and years ago, when she was only a child in my arms. Help me, Albert !" It was piteous to see so gentle and calm a life as hers had been so troubled as it grew towards the end, piteous to see its one hope beaten down an i trampled under foot, piteous to see her anguish and pain at her great loss ; but her son seated her in her chair, resting his hands tenderly on her breast, as he said, " Mother, you must hear me noWi I cannot help you to what you want. It is too late ; the evil has already fallen upon us. Margaret loves Luke Connor to-day well enough to take his crime, if he has a crime, upon herself -to share with him for ever his dishonoured name— if it is dishonoured. We must give her up to him, not for his sake, but for her own." "But you, Albert?— what of yourself, for you— you loved her ?" "It does not matter, mother. I would not love her at all, if I loved myself better," the poor old fellow said, wearily. " I have you and my home and my work. These have always been enough for me— they will be enough new. Our care must be no hint to her against the honour of the man she loves — no reproach nor suspicion against him from us. If calumny or unpalatable truth touches him, neither must come from us. I doubt if he has spoken to her yet. Let us wait and be very tender with her, for she has been the steady light and warmth of home to both of us." "If this is true, my son, that you havej told me," she said, "then God help us all. These are dark, stormy days coming to me at the end. But I will not speak of my trouble to her ; send her in to me. lam very tired, and need her." When tbe Professor went out into the orchard where Margaret was, he looked like a very old man — indeed, like a man on whom affliction had fallen heavily, suddenly robbing him of youth and purpose. At the gate the old wrecking-mastor accosted him, "You're ailing, Professor," he said. "These nor'easters affect people onused to 'em, sometimes. Now, they have affected you, and you aren't well. Not a bit of it." "You mistake, Captain Brown. lam well enough, but tired. I walked along the coast to the wreck of the Osprey, and the sands were heavy." The Professor wanted to be alone, and would have passed on, but the old Captain was inclined, just then, to hear himself talk, and fancied the Professor I wanted to hear him too. The latter stopped courteously to listen to what the wrecker had to say. " And so you walked all the way up there to the wreck, eh ? Well, now, its curious how strangers to these parts will hanker after wrecks, and stories of 'em, but they do. Now, Professor, it wasn't a pleasant sight to see that young woman a-lying there, and him beside her? No, I know it wasn't. But we see a heap of such sights, an' you might think, now, it would harden us like, but it don't. Now, maybe you don't think it, but no woman would care for that poor body there, tender as them wreckers. They're men, they are. But that isn't what hurts 'em most, though. What hurts them men is to see a crew, with a woman or a baby among 'em, cling to a ship's sides, and the winds howling like devils about 'em and the big waves rolling up to 'em, hungry like to drag 'em all into the sea, and for them men to stand there on the shore, helpless, and knowing that no life-boat as was ever built couli live out there, and that they can't save 'em, after awhile, drop one by one into the sea. Now, Professor, if this Government of ours could afford it, which it can't you know, it would have a mortar down here, and we could fire a line to them ships easy enough ; but Government is too poor, you see. Seeing people calling on us to save 'em when we can't, is what hurts us wreckers, and makes wreckin' an onpleasent business to foller ; but then we do save lots that never would be saved only for us, and that makes it pleasant again, you see." While the old wrecker, leaning on the gate, talked on monotonously, the Professor was looking out seaward, watching the first signs of a coming storm. "This wind is getting fresher, I think, Captain?" he asked. "Surely. It'll be a hurricane before morning ; but they'll all give this bit of devil's coast a wide berth to-aight. It's when it comes up in a minute like, and takes 'em unawares that they come smashing onto it ; but you see, Professor, they've got warning to-night." The Captain, casting a last glance at the ! threatening sky, went indoors ; and the Professor, finding Margaret, sept her into Mrs Daunton, and then started off for a long walk along the river-shore. (To be Continued. )