the steep wooden stairs from the roaring,
weather-beaten platform, to the more secure inhabited keep; and,
humming a satisfied tune, he entered upon Margery in her flaming
kitchen, to find the old lady intent on sorting out a heap of feminine
garments and spreading them before the fire.

Rene took up a little shoe, sand-soiled and limp, and reverentially
rubbed it on his sleeve.

"Well, mother," he said, cheerfully, "it is a long while since you had
to do with such pretty things. My faith, these are droll doings,
ah--and good, too! You will see, Mother Margery, there will be good
out of all this."

But Margery invariably saw fit, on principle, to doubt all the
opinions of her rival.

Eh, she didn't hold so much wi' wenches hersel', an' Mester Adrian,
she reckoned, hadn't come to live here all by himsel' to have visitors
breaking in on him that gate!

"There be visitors _and_ visitors, mother--I tell you, I who speak to
you, that his honour is happy."

Margery, with a mysterious air, smoothed out a long silk stocking and
gave an additional impetus to the tremor Nature had already bestowed
upon her aged head.

Well, it wasn't for her to say. She hoped and prayed there was nowt
bad a coomin' on the family again; but sich likenesses as that of Miss
to her mother was not lucky, to her minding; it was not. Nowt good had
come to Mester Adrian from the French Madam. Ah, Mester Adrian had
been happy like with her too, and she had taken him away from his
home, an' his people, an' sent him back wi'out 's soul in the end.

"And now her daughter has come to give it him back," retorted Rene,
as he fell to, with a zest, on the savoury mess he had concocted for
his own supper.

"Eh, well, I hope nowt bad's i' the road," said Margery with senile
iteration. "They do say no good ever comes o' saving bodies from
drowning; not that one 'ud wish the poor Miss to have gone into the
sands--an' she the babby I weaned too!"

Rene interrupted her with a hearty laugh. "Yes, every one knows it
carries misfortune to save people from the drowning, but there, you
see, her ladyship, she saved herself--so that ought to bring good
fortune. Good-night, Mother Margery, take good care of the lady....
Ah, how I wish I had the care of her!" he added simply, and, seizing
his lantern, proceeded to ascend once more to his post aloft.

He paused once on his way, in the loud sighing stairs, struck with a
fresh aspect of the day's singular events--a