and her school-girl accomplishments.

Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that
none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again,
unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking
vessel. Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who
had stood in white despair as they thought of these two young lives soon
to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern men--the old
sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the city
counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion that
overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are
capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.

This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at
the same moment.

As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his eyes
opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural
lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting
him. His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses
stole the murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the wavelike
movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that entered with
every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed close to his
ear. And every sense, and every instinct, and every reviving pulse told
him in language like a revelation from another world that a woman's arms
were around him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace
had brought him.

She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor
made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:--

"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said. "Wait until the litter
comes. Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy
flask about him?"

One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather awkward,
but did not come forward.

The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.

"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old
Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any help.
I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled."

So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla stamped
on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more of the
specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which happen
to persons of his calling.

The