his heart, a
simple-minded old dotard, who had been taken in by her hypocrisy.

And Tom accompanied the Lieutenant on his dreary errand that day, and
several days after, through depositions before a justice, interviews
with Lloyd's underwriters, and all the sad details which follow a
wreck. Ere the week's end, forty bodies and more had been recovered,
and brought up, ten or twelve at a time, to the churchyard, and upon
the down, and laid side by side in one long shallow pit, where Frank
Headley read over them the blessed words of hope, amid the sobs of
women, and the grand silence of stalwart men, who knew not how soon
their turn might come; and after each procession came Grace Harvey,
with all her little scholars two and two, to listen to the funeral
service; and when the last corpse was buried, they planted flowers
upon the mound, and went their way again to learn hymns and read
their Bible--little ministering angels to whom, as to most sailors'
children, death was too common a sight to have in it aught of hideous
or strange.

And this was the end of the good ship Hesperus, and all her gallant
crew.

Verily, however important the mere animal lives of men may be, and
ought to be, at times, in our eyes, they never have been so, to judge
from floods and earthquakes, pestilence and storm, in the eyes of
Him who made and loves us all. It is a strange fact, better for us,
instead of shutting our eyes to it because it interferes with our
modern tenderness of pain, to ask honestly what it means.

CHAPTER V.

THE WAY TO WIN THEM.

So, for a week or more, Tom went on thrivingly enough, and became a
general favourite in the town. Heale had no reason to complain of
boarding him; for he had dinner and supper thrust on him every day by
one and another, who were glad enough to have him for the sake of his
stories, and songs, and endless fun and good-humour. The Lieutenant,
above all, took the new-comer under his especial patronage, and was
paid for his services in some of Tom's incomparable honey-dew. The
old fellow soon found that the Doctor knew more than one old foreign
station of his, and ended by pouring out to him his ancient wrongs,
and the evil doings of the wicked admiral; all of which Tom heard with
deepest sympathy, and surprise that so much naval talent had remained
unappreciated by the unjust upper powers; and the Lieutenant, of
course, reported of him accordingly to Heale.

"A very civil spoken and i