dage by some creature of the kind? Unhappy
the man who misses that sweet and sacred slavery.

Mr. Cassall wrinkled his grim face not unpleasantly. "Go on; go on.
You're a lawyer, neither more nor less. By the way, who is this--this
what's-the-name--the Doctor, that you mentioned?"

"Oh! he is a very clever young man who has chosen to become a surgeon
instead of being a university professor. He's now out on the North Sea
in all this bad weather. He was so much struck with the need of a
hospital, that he made up his mind to risk a winter so that he may tell
people exactly what he has seen. He doesn't do things in a half-hearted
way.

"What a long, pretty description of Mr. Ferrier. You seem to have taken
a good deal of notice of the fortunate youth. Well, proceed."

Marion was a little flushed when she resumed, but her uncle did not
observe anything at all unusual.

"Where was I?--Oh, yes! You hold it right to give money in charity to
deserving objects. Now these men out at sea were left for years, perhaps
for centuries, to live as a class without hope or help. Dear good
creatures like my own uncle actually never knew that such people were in
existence. They were far worse off than savages who have plantains and
pumpkins and cocoanuts, and they were our own good flesh and blood, yet
we neglected them."

"So we do the East Enders, and the Lancashire operatives and the dock
labourers."

"True. But we are doing better now. Then you see the East End has been
discovered a long time, and visitors can walk; but the poor North Sea
men were left alone, until lately, by everybody."

"Still, we haven't come to why _I_ should help them."

"Oh! uncle, you are a commercial man. Look at selfish reasons alone. You
know how much we depend on sailors, and you often say the country is so
very, very ill-provided with them. And these men are--oh! such splendid
seamen. Fancy them staying out for two months with a gale of wind per
week, and doing it in little boats about eighty feet long. You should
see a hundred of them moving about in mazes and never running into any
trouble. Oh! uncle, it _is_ wonderful. Well, now, these men would be all
ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say
that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they
learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by
instinct. There is nothing they don't understand about the sea, and wind
and weather. Would