"What were the guns from, then, Brown?" asks the Lieutenant of the head-boatman.
"Off the Chough and Crow, I thought, sir. God grant not!"
"You thought, sir!" says the great man, willing to vent his vexation on some one. "Why didn't you make sure?"
"Why, just look, Lieutenant," says Brown, pointing into the "blank height of the dark;" "and I was on the pier too, and couldn't see; but the look-out man here says—" A shift of wind, a drift of cloud, and the moon flashes out a moment.—"There she is, sir!"
Some three hundred yards out at sea lies a long curved black line, beautiful, severe, and still, amid those white wild leaping hills. A murmur from the crowd, which swells into a roar, as they surge aimlessly up and down.
Another moment, and it is cut in two by a white line—covered—lost—all hold their breaths. No; the sea passes on, and still the black curve is there; enduring.
"A terrible big ship!"
"A Liverpool clipper, by the lines of her."
"God help the poor passengers, then!" sobs a woman. "They're past our help: she's on her beam ends."
"And her deck upright toward us."
"Silence! Out of the way you loafing long-shores!" shouts the Lieutenant. "Brown—the rockets!"
What though the Lieutenant be somewhat given to strong liquors, and stronger language? He wears the Queen's uniform; and what is more, he knows his work, and can do it; all make a silent ring while the fork is planted; the Lieutenant, throwing away the end of his cigar, kneels and adjusts the stick; Brown and his mates examine and shake out the coils of line.
Another minute, and the magnificent creature rushes forth with a triumphant roar, and soars aloft over the waves in a long stream of fire, defiant of the gale.
Is it over her? No! A fierce gust, which all but hurls the spectators to the ground; the fiery stream sweeps away to the left, in a grand curve of sparks, and drops into the sea.
"Try it again!" shouts the Lieutenant, his blood now up. "We'll see which will beat, wind or powder."
Again a rocket is fixed, with more allowance for the wind; but the black curve has disappeared, and he must wait awhile.
"There it is again! Fly swift and sure," cries Elsley, "thou fiery angel of mercy, bearing the saviour-line! It may not be too late yet."
Full and true the rocket went across her; and "three cheers for the Lieutenant!" rose above the storm.
"Silence, lads! Not so bad, though;" says he, rubbing his wet hands.
"Hold on by the line, and watch for a bite, Brown."
Five minutes pass. Brown has the line in his hand, waiting for any signal touch from the ship: but the line sways limp in the surge.
Ten minutes. The Lieutenant lights a fresh cigar, and paces up and down, smoking fiercely.
A quarter of an hour; and yet no response. The moon is shining clearly now. They can see her hatchways, the stumps of her masts, great tangles of rigging swaying and lashing down across her deck; but that delicate upper curve is becoming more ragged after every wave; and the tide is rising fast.
"There's a pull!" shouts Brown…. "No, there ain't … God have mercy, sir! She's going!"
The black curve boils up, as if a mine had been sprung on board, leaps into arches, jagged peaks, black bars crossed and tangled; and then all melts away into the white seething waste; while the line floats home helplessly, as if disappointed; and the billows plunge more sullenly and sadly towards the shore, as if in remorse for their dark and reckless deed.
All is over. What shall we do now? Go home, and pray that God may have mercy on all drowning souls? Or think what a picturesque and tragical scene it was, and what a beautiful poem it will make, when we have thrown it into an artistic form, and bedizened it with conceits and analogies stolen from all heaven and earth by our own self-willed fancy?
Elsley Vavasour—through whose spectacles, rather than with my own eyes, I have been looking at the wreck, and to whose account, not to mine, the metaphors and similes of the last two pages must be laid—took the latter course; not that he was not awed, calmed, and even humbled, as he felt how poor and petty his own troubles were, compared with that great tragedy: but in his fatal habit of considering all matters in heaven and earth as bricks and mortar for the poet to build with, he considered that he had "seen enough;" as if men were sent into the world to see and not to act; and going home too excited to sleep, much more to go and kiss forgiveness to his sleeping wife, sat up all night, writing "The Wreck," which may be (as the reviewer in "The Parthenon" asserts) an exquisite poem; but I cannot say that it is of much importance.
So the delicate genius sate that night, scribbling verses by a warm fire, and the rough Lieutenant settled himself down in his Mackintoshes, to sit out those weary hours on the bare rock, having done all that he could do, and yet knowing that his duty was, not to leave the place as long as there was a chance of saving—not a life, for that was past all hope—but a chest of clothes, or a stick of timber. There he settled himself, grumbling, yet faithful; and filled up the time with sleepy maledictions against some old admiral, who had—or had not—taken a spite to him in the West Indies thirty years before, else he would have been a post captain by now, comfortably in bed on board a crack frigate, instead of sitting all night out on a rock, like an old cormorant, etc. etc. Who knows not the woes of ancient coast-guard lieutenants?
But as it befell, Elsley Vavasour was justly punished for going home, by losing the most "poetical" incident of the whole night.
For with the coast-guardsmen many sailors stayed. There was nothing to be earned by staying: but still, who knew but they might be wanted? And they hung on with the same feeling which tempts one to linger round a grave ere the earth is filled in, loth to give up the last sight, and with it the last hope. The ship herself, over and above her lost crew, was in their eyes a person to be loved and regretted. And Gentleman Jan spoke, like a true sailor—
"Ah, poor dear! And she such a beauty, Mr. Brown; as any one might see by her lines, even that way off. Ah, poor dear!"
"And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not ready, Mr. Beer," says the serious elderly chief boatman. "Eh, Captain Willis?"
"The Lord has had mercy on them, I don't doubt." answers the old man, in his quiet sweet voice. "One can't but hope that he would give them time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead—that is, once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,—why, I know well how quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning, and the light of conscience, too, all one's life in one minute, like—"
"It arn't the men I care for," says Gentleman Jan; "they're gone to heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle: but the poor dear ship, d'ye see, Captain Willis, she ha'n't no heaven to go to, and that's why I feel for her so."
Both the old men shake their heads at Jan's doctrine, and turn the subject off.
"You'd better go home, Captain, 'fear of the rheumatics. It's a rough night for your years; and you've no call, like me."
"I would, but my maid there; and I can't get her home; and I can't leave her." And Willis points to the schoolmistress, who sits upon the flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.
"Make her go; it's her duty—we all have our duties. Why does her mother let her out at this time of night? I keep my maids tighter than that, I warrant." And disciplinarian Mr. Brown makes a step towards her.
"Ah, Mr. Brown, don't now! She's not one of us. There's no saying what's going on there in her. Maybe she's praying; maybe she sees more than we do, over the sea there."
"What do you mean? There's no living body in those breakers, be sure!"
"There's more living things about on such a night than have bodies to them, or than any but such as she can see. If any one ever talked with angels, that maid does; and I've heard her, too; I can say I have—certain of it. Those that like may call her an innocent: but I wish I were such an innocent, Mr. Brown. I'd be nearer heaven then, here on earth, than I fear sometimes I ever shall be, even after I'm dead and gone."
"Well, she's a good girl, mazed or not; but look at her now! What's she after?"
The girl had raised her head, and was pointing, with one arm stretched stiffly out toward the sea.
Old Willis went down to her, and touched her gently on the shoulder.
"Come home, my maid, then, you'll take cold, indeed;" but she did not move or lower her arm.
The old man, accustomed to her fits of fixed melancholy, looked down under her bonnet, to see whether she was "past," as he called it. By the moonlight he could see her great eyes steady and wide open. She motioned him away, half impatiently, and then sprang to her feet with a scream.
"A man! A man! Save him!"
As she spoke, a huge wave rolled in, and shot up the sloping end of the point in a broad sheet of foam.
And out of it struggled, on hands and knees, a human figure. He looked wildly up, and round, and then his head dropped again on his breast; and he lay clinging with outspread arms, like Homer's polypus in the Odyssey, as the wave drained back, in a thousand roaring cataracts, over the edge of the rock.
"Save him!" shrieked she again, as twenty men rushed forward—and stopped short. The man was fully thirty yards from them: but close to him, between them and him, stretched a long ghastly crack, some ten feet wide, cutting the point across. All knew it: its slippery edge, its polished upright sides, the seething cauldrons within it; and knew, too, that the next wave would boil up from it in a hundred jets, and suck in the strongest to his doom, to fall, with brains dashed out, into a chasm from which was no return.
Ere they could nerve themselves for action, the wave had come. Up the slope it went, one half of it burying the wretched mariner, and fell over into the chasm. The other half rushed up the chasm itself, and spouted forth again to the moonlight in columns of snow, in time to meet the wave from which it had just parted, as it fell from above; and then the two boiled up, and round, and over, and swirled along the smooth rock to their very feet.
The schoolmistress took one long look; and as the wave retired, rushed after it to the very brink of the chasm, and flung herself on her knees.
"She's mazed!"
"No, she's not!" almost screamed old Willis, in mingled pride and terror, as he rushed after her. "The wave has carried him across the crack and she's got him!" And he sprang upon her, and caught her round the waist.
"Now, if you be men!" shouted he, as the rest hurried down.
"Now, if you be men; before the next wave comes!" shouted Big Jan. "Hands together, and make a line!" And he took a grip with one hand of the old man's waistband, and held out the other for who would to seize.
Who took it? Frank Headley, the curate, who had been watching all sadly apart, longing to do something which no one could mistake.
"Be you man enough?" asked big Jan doubtfully.
"Try," said Frank.
"Really, you ben't, sir," said Jan, civilly enough. "Means no offence, sir; your heart's stout enough, I see; but you don't know what'll be." And he caught the hand of a huge fellow next him, while Frank shrank sadly back into the darkness.
Strong hand after hand was clasped, and strong knee after knee dropped almost to the rock, to meet the coming rush of water; and all who knew their business took a long breath,—they might have need of one.
It came, and surged over the man, and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered with the strain: but when the cataract had disappeared, the chain was still unbroken.
"Saved!" and a cheer broke from all lips, save those of the girl herself; she was as senseless as he whom she had saved. They hurried her and him up the rock ere another wave could come; but they had much ado to open her hands, so firmly clenched together were they round his waist.
Gently they lifted each, and laid them on the rock; while old Willis, having recovered his breath, set to work crying like a child, to restore breath to "his maiden."
"Run for Dr. Heale, some good Christian!" But Frank, longing to escape from a company who did not love him, and to be of some use ere the night was out, was already half-way to the village on that very errand.
However, ere the Doctor could be stirred out of his boozy slumbers, and thrust into his clothes by his wife, the schoolmistress was safe in bed at her mother's house; and the man, weak, but alive, carried triumphantly up to Heale's door; which having been kicked open, the sailors insisted in carrying him right upstairs, and depositing him on the best spare bed.
"If you won't come to your patients, Doctor, your patients shall come to you. Why were you asleep in your liquors, instead of looking out for poor wratches, like a Christian? You see whether his bones be broke, and gi'un his medicines proper; and then go and see after the schoolmistress; she'm worth a dozen of any man, and a thousand of you! We'll pay for 'un like men; and if you don't, we'll break every bottle in your shop."
To which, what between bodily fear and real good-nature, old Heale assented; and so ended that eventful night.
CHAPTER IV.
FLOTSOM, JETSOM, AND LAGEND
About nine o'clock the next morning, Gentleman Jan strolled into Dr. Heale's surgery, pipe in mouth, with an attendant satellite; for every lion, poor as well as rich,—in country as in town, must needs have his jackal.
Heale's surgery—or, in plain English, shop—was a doleful hole enough; in such dirt and confusion as might be expected from a drunken occupant, with a practice which was only not decaying because there was no rival in the field. But monopoly made the old man, as it makes most men, all the more lazy and careless; and there was not a drug on his shelves which could be warranted to work the effect set forth in that sanguine and too trustful book, the Pharmacopoeia, which, like Mr. Pecksniff's England, expects every man to do his duty, and is, accordingly (as the Lancet and Dr. Letheby know too well), grievously disappointed.
In this kennel of evil savours, Heale was slowly trying to poke things into something like order; and dragging out a few old drugs with a shaky hand, to see if any one would buy them, in a vague expectation that something must needs have happened to somebody the night before, which would require somewhat of his art.
And he was not disappointed. Gentleman Jan, without taking his pipe out of his mouth, dropped his huge elbows on the counter, and his black-fringed chin on his fists; took a look round the shop, as if to find something which would suit him; and then—
"I say, Doctor, gi's some tackleum."
"Some diachylum plaster, Mr. Beer?" says Heale, meekly. "What for, then?"
"To tackle my shins. I barked 'em cruel against King Arthur's nose last night. Hard in the bone he is;—wish I was as hard."
"How much diachylum will you want, then, Mr. Beer?"
"Well, I don't know. Let's see!" and Jan pulls up his blue trousers, and pulls down his grey rig and furrows, and considers his broad and shaggy shins.
"Matter of four pennies broad: two to each leg;" and then replaces his elbows, and smokes on.
"I say, Doctor, that 'ere curate come out well last night. I shall go to church next Sunday."
"What," asks the satellite, "after you upset he that fashion yesterday?"
"I don't care what you thinks;" says Jan, who, of course, bullies his jackal, like most lions: "but I goes to church. He's a good 'un, say I,—little and good, like a Welshman's cow; and clapped me on the back when we'd got the man and the maid safe, and says,—'Well done our side, old fellow!' and stands something hot all round, what's more, in at the Mariner's Rest.—I say, Doctor, where's he as we hauled ashore? I'll go up and see 'un."
"Not now, then, Mr. Beer; not now, then. He's sleeping, indeed he is, like any child."
"So much the better. We wain't be bothered with his hollering. But go up I will. Do ye let me now; I'll be as still as a maid."
And Jan kicked off his shoes, and marched on tip-toe through the shop, while Dr. Heale, moaning professional ejaculations, showed him the way.
The shipwrecked man was sleeping sweetly; and little was to be seen of his face, so covered was it with dark tangled curls and thick beard.
"Ah! a 'Stralian digger, by the beard of him, and his red jersey," whispered Jan, as he bent tenderly over the poor fellow, and put his head on one side to listen to his breathing. "Beautiful he sleeps, to be sure!" said Jan: "and a tidy-looking chap, too. 'Tis a pity to wake 'un, poor wratch; and he, perhaps, with a sweetheart aboard, and drownded; or else all his kit lost.—Let 'un sleep so long as he can: he'll find all out soon enough, God help him!"
And big Jan stole down the stairs gently and reverently, like a true sailor; and took his diachylum, and went off to plaster his shins.
About ten minutes afterwards, Heale was made aware that his guest was awake, "by sundry grunts and ejaculations, which ended in a series of long and doleful whistles, and then broke out into a song. So he went up, and found the stranger sitting upright in bed, combing his curls with his fingers, and chaunting unto himself a cheerful ditty.
"Good morning, Doctor," quoth he, as his host entered. "Very kind of you, this. Hope I haven't turned a better man than myself out of his bed."
"Delighted to see you so well. Very near drowned, though. We were pumping at your lungs for a full half hour."
"Ah? nothing, though, for an experienced professional man like you!"
"Hum! speaks well for your discrimination," says Heale, flattered. "Very well-spoken young person, though his beard is a bit wild.—How did you know, then, that I was a doctor?"
"By the reverend looks of you, sir. Besides, I smelt the rhubarb and senna all the way up-stairs, and knew that I'd fallen among professional brethren;—
"'Oh, then this valiant mariner,
Which sailed across the sea,
He came home to his own sweetheart,
With his heart so full of glee;
With his heart so full of glee, sir,
And his pockets full of gold,
And his bag of drugget, with many a nugget,
As heavy as he could hold.'
"Don't you wish yours was, Doctor?"
"Eh, eh, eh," sniggered Heale.
"Mine was last night. Now, Doctor, let's have a glass of brandy-and-water, hot with, and an hour's more sleep; and then kick me out, and into the workhouse. Was anybody else saved from the wreck last night?"
"Nobody, sir," said Heale; and said "sir," because, in spite of the stranger's rough looks, his accent,—or rather, his no-accent,—showed him that he had fallen in with a very different, and probably a very superior stamp of man to himself; in the light of which conviction (and being withal a good-natured old soul), he went down and mixed him a stiff glass of brandy-and water, answering his wife's remonstrances by—
"The party up-stairs is a bit of a frantic party, certainly; but he is certainly a very superior party, and has the true gentleman about him, any one can see. Besides, he's shipwrecked, as you and I may be any day; and what's like brandy-and-water?"
"I should like to know when I'm like to be shipwrecked, or you either;" says Mrs. Heale, in a tone slightly savouring of indignation and contempt. "You think of nothing but brandy-and-water." But she let the doctor take the glass upstairs, nevertheless.
A few minutes afterwards, Frank came in, and inquired for the shipwrecked man.
"Well enough in body, sir; and rather requires your skill than mine," said the old time-server. "Won't you walk up?"
So up Frank was shown.
The stranger was sitting up in bed. "Capital, your brandy is, Doctor,—Ah, sir," seeing Frank, "it is very kind of you, I am sure, to call on me! I presume you are the clergyman?"
But before Frank could answer, Heale had broken forth into loud praises of him, setting forth how the stranger owed his life entirely to his superhuman strength and courage.
"'Pon my word, sir," said the stranger,—looking them both over and over, through and through, as if to settle how much of all this he was to believe,—"I am deeply indebted to you for your gallantry. I only wish it had been employed on a better subject."
"My good sir," said Frank, blushing, "you owe your life not to me. I would have helped if I could; but was not thought worthy by our sons of Anak here. Your actual preserver was a young girl."
And Frank told him the story.
"Whew! I hope she won't expect me to marry her as payment.—Handsome?"
"Beautiful," said Frank.
"Money?"
"The village schoolmistress."
"Clever?"
"A sort of half-baked body," said Heale.
"A very puzzling intellect," said Frank
"Ah—well—that's a fair excuse for declining the honour. I can't be expected to marry a frantic party, as you called me down stairs just now, Doctor."
"I, sir?"
"Yes, I heard; no offence, though, my good sir,—but I've the ears of a fox. I hope really, though, that she is none the worse for her heroic flights."
"How is she this morning, Mr. Heale?"
"Well—poor thing, a little light-headed last night: but kindly when I went in last."
"Whew! I hope she has not fallen in love with me. She may fancy me her property—a private waif and stray. Better send for the Coast-guard officer, and let him claim me as belonging to the Admiralty, as flotsom, jetsom, and lagend; for I was all three last night."
"You were, indeed, sir," said Frank, who began to be a little tired of this levity; "and very thankful to Heaven you ought to be."
Frank spake this in a somewhat professional tone of voice; at which the stranger arched his eyebrows, screwed his lips up, and laid his ears back, like a horse when he meditates a kick,
"You must be better acquainted with my affairs than I am, my dear sir, if you are able to state that fact.—Doctor! I hear a patient coming into the surgery."
"Extraordinary power of hearing, to be sure," said Heale, toddling down stairs, while the stranger went on, looking Frank full in the face.
"Now that old fogy's gone down stairs, my dear sir, let us come to an understanding at the beginning of our acquaintance. Of course, you're bound by your cloth to say that sort of thing to me, just as I am bound by it not to swear in your company: but you'll allow me to remark, that it would be rather trying even to your faith, if you were to be thrown ashore with nothing in the world but an old jersey and a bag of tobacco, two hundred miles short of the port where you hoped to land with fifteen hundred well-earned pounds in your pocket."
"My dear sir," said Frank, after a pause, "whatsoever comes from our Father's hand must be meant in love. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.'"
A quaint wince passed over the stranger's face.
"Father, sir? That fifteen hundred pounds was going to my father's hand, from whosesoever hand it came, or the loss of it. And now what is to become of the poor old man, that hussy Dame Fortune only knows—if she knows her own mind an hour together, which I very much doubt. I worked early and late for that money, sir; up to my knees in mud and water. Let it be enough for your lofty demands on poor humanity, that I take my loss like a man, with a whistle and a laugh, instead of howling and cursing over it like a baboon. Let's talk of something else; and lend me five pounds, and a suit of clothes. I shan't run away with them, for as I've been thrown ashore here, here I shall stay."
Frank almost laughed at the free and easy request, though he felt at once pained by the man's irreligion, and abashed by his Stoicism;—would he have behaved even as well in such a case?
"I have not five pounds in the world."
"Good! we shall understand each other better."
"But the suit of clothes you shall have at once."
"Good again! Let it be your oldest; for I must do a little rock-scrambling here, for purposes of my own."
So off went Frank to fetch the clothes, puzzling over his new parishioner. The man was not altogether well bred, either in voice or manner; but there was an ease, a confidence, a sense of power, which made Frank feel that he had fallen in with a very strong nature; and one which had seen many men, and many lands, and profited by what it had seen.
When he returned, he found the stranger busy at his ablutions, and gradually appearing as a somewhat dapper, handsome fellow, with a bright grey eye, a short nose, a firm, small mouth, a broad and upright forehead, across the left side of which ran a fearful scar.
"That's a shrewd mark," said he, as he caught Frank's eye fixed on it, while he sat coolly arranging himself on the bedside. "I got it in fair fight, though, by a Crow's tomahawk in the Rocky Mountains. And here's another token (lifting up his black curls), which a Greek robber gave me in the Morea. I've another under my head, for which I have to thank a Tartar, and one or two more little remembrances of flood and field up and down me. Perhaps they may explain to you why I take life and death so coolly. I've looked too often at the little razor-bridge which parts them, to care much for either. Now, don't let me trouble you any longer. You have your flock to see to, I don't doubt. You'll find me at church on Sunday. I always do at Rome as Rome does."
"Then you will stay away," said Frank, with a sad smile.
"Ah? No. Church is respectable and aristocratic; and there one don't get sent to a place unmentionable, ten times an hour, by some inspired tinker. Beside, country people like the Doctor to go to church with their betters; and the very fellows who go to the Methodist meeting themselves would think it infra dig. in me to walk in there. Now, good-bye—though I haven't introduced myself—not knowing the name of my kind preserver."
"My name is Frank Headley, Curate of the Parish," said Frank, smiling: though he saw the man was rattling on for the purpose of preventing his talking on serious matters.
"And mine is Tom Thurnall, F.R.C.S., Licentiate of the Universities of Paris, Glasgow, and whilome surgeon of the good clipper Hesperus, which you saw wrecked last night. So, farewell!"
"Come over with me, and have some breakfast."
"No, thanks; you'll be busy. I'll screw some out of old bottles here."
"And now," said Tom Thurnall to himself, as Frank left the room, "to begin life again with an old penknife and a pound of honeydew. I wonder which of them got my girdle. I'll stick here till I find out that one thing, and stop the notes by to-day's post if I can but recollect them all;—if I could but stop the nugget, too!"
So saying, he walked down into the surgery, and looked round. Everything was in confusion. Cobwebs were over the bottles, and armies of mites played at bo-peep behind them. He tried a few drawers, and found that they stuck fast; and when he at last opened one, its contents were two old dried-up horse-balls, and a dirty tobacco-pipe. He took down a jar marked Epsom salts, and found it full of Welsh snuff; the next, which was labelled cinnamon, contained blue vitriol. The spatula and pill-roller were crusted with deposits of every hue. The pill-box drawer had not a dozen whole boxes in it; and the counter was a quarter of an inch deep in deposit of every vegetable and mineral matter, including ends of string, tobacco ashes, and broken glass.
Tom took up a dirty duster, and set to work coolly to clear up, whistling away so merrily that he brought in Heale.
"I'm doing a little in the way of business, you see."
"Then you really are a professional practitioner, sir, as Mr. Headley informs me: though, of course, I don't doubt the fact?" said Heale, summoning up all the little courage he had, to ask the question with.
"F.R.C.S. London, Paris, and Glasgow. Easy enough to write and ascertain the fact. Have been medical officer to a poor-law union, and to a Brazilian man-of-war. Have seen three choleras, two army fevers, and yellow-jack without end. Have doctored gunshot wounds in the two Texan wars, in one Paris revolution, and in the Schleswig-Holstein row; beside accident practice in every country from California to China, and round the world and back again. There's a fine nest of Mr. Weekes's friend (if not creation), Acarus Horridus," and Tom went on dusting and arranging.
Heale had been fairly taken aback by the imposing list of acquirements, and looked at his guest awhile with considerable awe: suddenly a suspicion flashed across him, which caused him (not unseen by Tom) a start and a look of self-congratulatory wisdom. He next darted out of the shop, and returned as rapidly, rather redder about the eyes, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"But, sir, though, though"—began he—"but, of course you will allow me, being a stranger—and as a man of business—all I have to say is, if—that is to say—"
"You want to know why, if I've had all these good businesses, why I haven't kept them?"
"Ex—actly," stammered Heale much relieved.
"A very sensible and business-like question: but you needn't have been so delicate about asking it as to want a screw before beginning."
"Ah, you're a wag, sir," keckled the old man,
"I'll tell you frankly; I have an old father, sir,—a gentleman, and a scholar, and a man of science; once in as good a country practice as man could have, till, God help him, he went blind, sir—and I had to keep him, and have still. I went over the world to make my fortune and never made it; and sent him home what I did make, and little enough too. At last, in my despair, I went to the diggings, and had a pretty haul—I needn't say how much. That matters little now; for I suppose it's at the bottom of the sea. There's my story, sir, and a poor one enough it is,—for the dear old man, at least." And Tom's voice trembled so as he told it, that old Heale believed every word, and, what is more, being—like most hard drinkers—not "unused to the melting mood," wiped his eyes fervently, and went off for another drop of comfort; while Tom dusted and arranged on, till the shop began to look quite smart and business-like.