while it grew darker and colder and damper hour by hour, till at
last the light went out, and left her with nothing to keep her company
but the moaning wind, the falling rain, and the wild cries of the
sea-birds when something disturbed them from their rest. The child was
asleep at last, wrapped up in a blanket and one of the smaller sails;
and Augusta, feeling quite worn out with solitude and the pressure of
heavy thoughts, began to think that the best thing she could do would be
to try to follow his example, when suddenly there came a knock at the
boards which served for a door to the shanty.

"Who is it?" she cried, with a start.

"Me--Mr. Meeson," answered a voice. "Can I come in?"

"Yes; if you like," said Augusta, sharply, though in her heart she was
really glad to see him, or, rather, to hear him, for it was too dark to
see anything. It is wonderful how, under the pressure of a great
calamity, we forget our quarrels and our spites, and are ready to jump at
the prospect of the human companionship of our deadliest enemy. And "the
moral of that is," as the White Queen says, that as we are all night and
day face to face with the last dread calamity--Death--we should
throughout our lives behave as though we saw the present shadow of his
hand. But that will never happen in the world while human nature is human
nature--and when will it become anything else?

"Put up the door again," said Augusta, when, from a rather rawer rush of
air than usual, she gathered that her visitor was within the hut.

Mr. Meeson obeyed, groaning audibly. "Those two brutes are getting
drunk," he said, "swallowing down rum by the gallon. I have come because
I could not stop with them any longer--and I am so ill, Miss Smithers, so
ill! I believe that I am going to die. Sometimes I feel as though all the
marrow in my bones were ice, and--and--at others just as though somebody
were shoving a red-hot wire up them. Can't you do anything for me?"

"I don't see what is to be done," answered Augusta, gently, for the
man's misery touched her in spite of her dislike for him. "You had better
lie down and try to go to sleep."

"To sleep!" he moaned; "how can I sleep? My blanket is wringing wet
and my clothes are damp," and he fairly broke down and began to
groan and sob.

"Try and go to sleep," urged Augusta again.

He made no answer, but by degrees he grew quieter, overwhelmed, perhaps,
by the solemn presence of the darkness. Augusta laid her hea