no chance for the 'long-shore men to turn an
honest penny without working hard for it. Work and wages enough there
would be, to be sure, helping to unload, whenever the sea, now so heavy,
should go down a little; but "work" and "wages" were not the precise
things some of them were most hungry for.

Two of them, at all events,--one a tall, grizzled, weather-beaten,
stoop-shouldered old man, in tattered raiment, and the other more
battered still, but with no "look of the sea" about him,--stood on a
sand-drift, gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the
shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the
beatings of the surf.

"Not more'n three hunder' yards out She'd break up soon, 'f there was no
one to hender. Wot a show we'd hev!"

"I reckon," growled the shorter man. "'S your name Peter?"

"Ay. I belong yer. Allers lived 'bout high-water mark. Whar'd ye come
from?"

The only answer was a sharp and excited exclamation. Neither of them had
been paying any attention to the bay side of the bar; and, while they
were gazing at the wreck, a very pretty little yacht had cast anchor,
close in shore; and then, with the help of a rowboat, quite a party of
ladies and gentlemen--the latter somewhat young-looking for the greater
part--had made their way to the land, and were now hurrying forward.
They did not pay the slightest attention to Peter and his companion, but
in a few minutes more they were trying to talk to those poor people on
the seaward beach. Trying, but not succeeding very well; for the wreck
had been a Bremen bark, with an assorted cargo and some fifty
passengers, all emigrants. German seemed to be their only tongue, and
none of Mrs. Kinzer's pleasure-party spoke German.

"Too bad," Ford Foster was saying about it, when there came a sort of
wail from a group at a little distance, and it seemed to close with,--

"_Pauvre enfant!_"

"French!" exclaimed Ford. "Why, they look as Dutch as any of the rest.
Come on, Annie, let's try and speak to them."

The rest followed, a good deal like a flock of sheep; and it was a sad
enough scene that lay before them. No lives had been lost in the wreck;
but there had been a good deal of suffering among the poor passengers,
cooped up between decks, with the hatches closed, while the storm
lasted. Nobody drowned, indeed; but all had been dreadfully soaked in
the surf in getting ashore, and among the rest had been the fair-haired
child, now l