facts relative to the discovery of the bodies of the woman and
infant were briefly placed on record. Few cared to speak openly. All
had an interest in saying as little as possible. 'Return an open verdict,
gentlemen; return an open verdict by all means,' suggested the wary
official; 'that is the shortest course you can adopt; safe and perfectly
legal; it decides nothing, contradicts nothing, concludes nothing.' No
advice could be more palatable to the parties he addressed. 'Found dead,'
was the ready response; 'but by what means, drowning or otherwise; there
is no evidence to show.'

"The coroner was delighted.

"'Precisely so; quite sufficient. My gig, and a glass of brandy and
water.'"

* * * * *

"No one claimed the bodies. Early interment was necessary; and a few
hours after the inquest was concluded, mother and child were consigned to
their parent earth.

"Six weeks afterward, an elderly man, with a most imperious manner and a
foreign accent, came down to the village and asked countless questions
relative to the shipwreck. The unhappy lady, he said, was his niece; and
earnest were the inquiries he made touching a large sum of money, which,
to his certain knowledge, she had about her when she went on shipboard.
Of this money, as a matter of course, no satisfactory tidings were
forthcoming. He then became violent; called the village a nest of
pirates; cursed the inhabitants without mercy; hoped that heaven's
lightnings would speedily fall, and raze the hamlet to the ground; and
indulged in a variety of comments, some just, some foolish, and all
angry.

"But with all his anxiety about his niece, and all his burning
indignation against her plunderers, he never visited the unhappy lady's
grave; never directed a stone to be placed over her; never deplored her
fate; never uttered a remark about her infant, save and except an avowal
of his unbounded satisfaction that it had perished with the mother-his
ever-recurring subject of regret was, not that he had lost his niece, but
that he had lost her money!

"Oh world! how base are thy calculations, how sordid thy conclusions! The
young, the fair, the helpless, the innocent may perish, it matters not.
Loss of relatives, of children, of country, of character, all may be
borne with complacency but--loss of money!

"Meanwhile the party who was suspected to have benefited most largely by
the shipwreck, went about her daily occupations with h