tender creature, suffered little
from the privation. She ate her meals of biscuit softened in the putrid
water, with an appetite that health and hunger alone can give, and
looked as rosy and as happy upon the coarse diet prepared by the kind
and attentive Sam Fraser, as if it had been compounded of the finest
white bread and new milk.

"Oh, what a blessing it is, my darling, that you continue so well!" said
Flora, on the fourth morning after her baby's natural sustenance had
been withdrawn. "I thought this illness would have been the death of
you."

"Dinna distress yersel about the wean," said Mrs. Muckleroy; "the gude
God takes care o' His ain. The wee cherub is as blithe as a lark. The
pure, fresh air, is baith meat an' drink to her."

Fortunately for Flora, the Captain had a consignment of old port on
board, a couple of tablespoonfuls of which, mixed with a little oatmeal,
twice a day, was all the nourishment she was able to take; but, in all
probability, it was the means of saving her life, and preventing her
from sinking from utter exhaustion.

When once more able to leave her bed and crawl upon deck, she looked the
mere shadow of her former self. The women, with whom she was a great
favourite, crowded round her to shake her by the hand, and offer their
congratulations on her recovery. Their simple and affectionate
expressions of regard and sympathy moved her very much.

"What depths of kindness there is in the human heart!" she thought. "How
little do we understand and appreciate the minds of uneducated people,
whom we are too apt to look down upon as inferiors. How far they surpass
the hackneyed children of the world in their generous devotion to those
they love. Unfettered by conventional selfishness, they dare to obey the
natural instincts of their humanity--to act and think with simplicity
and truth. We mistrust them, because we are unacquainted with their
mode of life, and the motives which influence their general conduct.
They look up to us, and have boundless faith in the superiority of our
position and intelligence. When will a higher Christianity than that
which at present rules the world break down the wall which pride and
bigotry have raised between children descended from one parent stock,
and bridge the gulf of poverty and ignorance that now separates them
from each other?"

"The time is coming," cries the philanthropic speculator; but adds, with
a sigh, "it will not be in our day. Yet it will