y name, missy. Have you ever heard your father tell
of it?"

"Many and many a time," I said, as I placed my hot little hand in his.
"He never found more than one man true on earth, and it was you, Sir."

"Come, now," he replied, with his eyes for a moment sparkling at my
warmth of words; "you must not have that in your young head, missy. It
leads to a miserable life. Your father hath always been unlucky--the
most unlucky that ever I did know. And luck cometh out in nothing
clearer than in the kind of folk we meet. But the Lord in heaven
ordereth all. I speak like a poor heathen."

"Oh, never mind that!" I cried: "only tell me, were you in time to
save--to save--" I could not bear to say what I wanted.

"In plenty of time, my dear; thanks to you. You must have fought when
you could not fight: the real stuff, I call it. Your poor father lies
where none can harm him. Come, missy, missy, you must not take on so. It
is the best thing that could befall a man so bound up with calamity. It
is what he hath prayed for for many a year--if only it were not for you.
And now you are safe, and for sure he knows it, if the angels heed their
business."

With these words he withdrew, and kindly sent Suan back to me, knowing
that her soothing ways would help me more than argument. To my mind
all things lay in deep confusion and abasement. Overcome with bodily
weakness and with bitter self-reproach, I even feared that to ask any
questions might show want of gratitude. But a thing of that sort could
not always last, and before very long I was quite at home with the
history of Mr. Gundry.

Solomon Gundry, of Mevagissey, in the county of Cornwall, in England,
betook himself to the United States in the last year of the last
century. He had always been a most upright man, as well as a first-rate
fisherman; and his family had made a rule--as most respectable families
at that time did--to run a nice cargo of contraband goods not more than
twice in one season. A highly querulous old lieutenant of the British
navy (who had served under Nelson and lost both, arms, yet kept "the
rheumatics" in either stump) was appointed, in an evil hour, to the
Cornish coast-guard; and he never rested until he had caught all the
best county families smuggling. Through this he lost his situation, and
had to go to the workhouse; nevertheless, such a stir had been roused
that (to satisfy public opinion) they made a large sacrifice of inferior
people, and among t