wisely quieted me with proposals for the
future. I deserved some reward (he was kind
enough to say) for the service I had done him,
and some compensation (he was so obliging as to
add) for what I had suffered. He was quite
willing—generous scoundrel!—to make me a
handsome yearly allowance, payable quarterly,
on two conditions. First, I was to hold my
tongue—in my own interests as well as in his.
Secondly, I was not to stir away from Welmingham,
without first letting him know, and waiting
till I had obtained his permission. In my own
neighbourhood, no virtuous female friends would
tempt me into dangerous gossiping at the tea-
table—in my own neighbourhood, he would
always know where to find me. A hard condition,
that second one—but I accepted it. What
else was I to do? I was left helpless, with the
prospect of a coming incumbrance in the shape
of a child. What else was I to do? Cast
myself on the mercy of my runaway idiot of a
husband who had raised the scandal against me? I
would have died first. Besides, the allowance was
a handsome one. I had a better income, a better
house over my head, better carpets on my floors,
than half the women who turned up the whites of
their eyes at the sight of me. The dress of Virtue,
in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.

"So, I accepted the conditions he offered me,
and made the best of them, and fought my
battle with my respectable neighbours on their
own ground, and won it in course of time—as
you saw yourself. How I kept his Secret (and
mine) through all the years that have passed
from that time to this; and whether my late
daughter, Anne, ever really crept into my
confidence, and got the keeping of the Secret too
—are questions, I dare say, to which you are
curious to find an answer. Well! my gratitude
refuses you nothing. I will turn to a fresh
page, and give you the answer, presently."

SHIPWRECKS.

Is a man's life worth four pounds seven
shillings and twopence?

The wind moans and pipes through the trees
in the garden, and comes rumbling down the
chimneys of our lodging by the sea. There
rises from the beach a solemn roar of waters.
Through splashes of rain on the window-
pane, through the twilight gloom of a spring
evening wrapped in the wild night of storm, we
look out on the glancing of white lines of surf,
and at the upward lightning of the rockets from
a vessel in distress. As if defiant of the little
flash of man's distress, the black cloud is ablaze;
and, for an instant, we make out a brig distinctly.
Had we time, we could count the men upon her
deck. Darkness descends again as the floor under
us is shaken by the mighty jarring of the thunder.
Our hearts beat in the presence of no holiday
spectacle. We came hither for sea air and
health, choosing a spot where there is a bold
coast, a fine sea, and only a small fisher hamlet
near us. Here, we learn, there are many wrecks.
The frail child we brought with us has fled from
the window to her sofa in the farthest corner of
the room, and lies there panting with her hands
before her eyes. I dare not leave her to go down
to the wild shore. And what can I, weak
invalid do when the very boatmen can do nothing
but assemble in a hopeless crowd upon the
beach? About them are hovering their mothers,
wives, and daughters, who will resist by entreaty
and force any attempt to put out through such a
surf. The women on the shore here have their
way; and so God comfort the wives and mothers
of those out at sea.

I did not lift next morning the corner of the
sail covering that by which my old pilot was
watching solemnly. He sat on the great heap
of sea-weed that now fringed the shore.

"How many, Jem?" I asked, after I had
stood by him for a long time in silence.

"Change for six fi'-pun' notes under yon sail,"
Jem answered.

"How can you jest—"

"Four tight sailors, a boy, and—" he
turned the sail from the face of a drowned seven-
year old girl, her hair like that of our own ailing
little Ethel. Jem finished his pipe gloomily.

I sat beside the spread sail in a reverie of
selfish pity.

"When you preached for the vicar, sir, last'
Sunday," presently said Jem, "you talked
something like as if money was dirt. Perhaps it is.
Perhaps that's dirt under the sail."

The nurse was bringing Ethel in her arms
towards us, and I motioned her away, although the
child cried bitterly to come to me and her rough
sailor friend. This morning her walk must not
be upon the shore.

"To be sure,* said Jem, a little grimly, " it's
not dirt when there's life in it. What a many
sorts of change people may take out of five
pounds."

"What I do  you mean?''

"Why, there was all hands lost last night for
want of a life-boat here. My son-in-law is coxswain
of the nearest life-boat, but that's thirty
miles from us. We've lots of wrecks, but never
a boat yet. There are boats wanted, belike, in
hundreds of other places where there are only
poor people ashore, though there are none the
kinder rocks and shoals at sea. We can't set
up a boat."

"A few five-pound notes," I said, " would
not have done it for you."

"Look here, sir," said Jem. "My son-in-
law, he's but a rough fisherman who knows his
trade, a stout lad, and not stupid on salt water.
He gets eight pound a year for being coxswain
of the life-boat at his place, and very proud he
are for so to be. Once a quarter he goes out
with the boat's crew, men like himself, for exercising
in rough weather, and they get their
day's pay too, as is fitting. They've a boat
that'll do anything but go out walking ashore by
itself, and that lives in a home of its own, handy
to the sea, ready to slip out on a wreck at a
minute's notice. What he tells me is, which is
the only learning he's got from books kep' in
the boat-house, that when the money that has