ire, among all the people of the village where he
died, knew that the old man was in the least a hero. They knew that he
was fond of children, and they were all willing to run to oblige him.
Perhaps he wanted no better reward. In these days of advertisement,
much would have been made of him; for the great Collingwood had
specially mentioned him for a brilliant act of bravery. As it was, he
got very little pension and no fame.

THE HEROINE OF A FISHING VILLAGE.

Until she was nineteen years old, Dorothy lived a very uneventful life;
for one week was much the same as another in the placid existence of the
village. On Sunday mornings, when the church-bells began to ring, you
would meet her walking over the moor with a springy step. Her shawl was
gay, and her dress was of the most pronounced colour that could be
bought in the market-town. Her brown hair was gathered in a net, and her
calm eyes looked from under an old-fashioned bonnet of straw. Her feet
were always bare, but she carried her shoes and stockings slung over her
shoulder. When she got near the church she sat down in the shade of a
hedge and put them on; then she walked the rest of the distance with a
cramped and civilized gait. On the Monday mornings early she carried the
water from the well. Her great "skeel" was poised easily on her head;
and, as she strode along singing lightly without shaking a drop of water
over the edge of her pail, you could see how she had come by her erect
carriage. When the boats came in, she went to the beach and helped to
carry the baskets of fish to the cart. She was then dressed in a sort of
thick flannel blouse and a singular quantity of brief petticoats. Her
head was bare, and she looked far better than in her Sunday clothes. If
the morning were fine she sat out in the sun and baited the lines, all
the while lilting old country songs in her guttural dialect. In the
evening she would spend some time chatting with other lasses in the Row;
but she never had a very long spell of that pastime, for she had to be
at work winter and summer by about five or six in the morning. The
fisher-folk do not waste many candles by keeping late hours. She was
very healthy and powerful, very ignorant, and very modest. Had she lived
by one of the big harbours, where fleets of boats come in, she might
have been as rough and brazen as the girls often are in those places.
But in her secluded little village the ways of the people were
old-fashio