than to revive them by
their rough treatment. Come, I will push ahead and try to save the men
before they press the breath out of their bodies."

In spite, however, of the active movements of the lawyer, the young
ladies kept up with him, and they arrived in front of the cottage just
as Shane and his son, aided by the widow, were lifting one of the men
they had saved out of the boat. She insisted on taking the seaman
first, and not till she had carried him up and placed him on her own bed
would she help to carry the other. The lawyer, however, arrived in time
to aid Shane in carrying up the young officer, for such he appeared to
be. As soon as they arrived at the hut, the apparently drowned man was
placed by Mr Jamieson's orders in front of the fire, then, having taken
off his coat, he knelt down and gently rubbed his chest. On the arrival
of the young ladies, such blankets and clothes as the widow possessed
were, by the lawyer's directions, placed to warm before the fire, that
the half-drowned men might be wrapped in them. No sooner, however, did
Lady Nora's eyes fall on the officer's countenance, than she uttered an
agonised cry, and threw herself by his side.

"Oh, it is Captain Denham--it is Captain Denham!" she exclaimed, "and he
is dead--he is dead." Pale and trembling she hung over him.

"No, my dear young lady," observed the lawyer, "he is still breathing,
and I trust that he will soon recover,--I already indeed see signs of
returning consciousness."

While Nora, regardless of all conventionalities, was assisting the
lawyer and her cousin in rubbing the captain's hands and feet, the widow
was bending over the inanimate form of the seaman.

"Shane," she exclaimed, "I told you my boy would come back, and here he
is; I feel it, I know it. Oh, Dermot, Dermot, speak to me," she
exclaimed. "Do not die now that you have come as you promised. Surely
it is not to break your old mother's heart that you have just returned
to die in her arms?"

Hearing these exclamations, the old lawyer turned round, and went to the
side of the widow.

"You will be wiser, my good woman, if you were to place some hot clothes
upon his chest, and chafe his hands and feet, instead of calling out in
that way. There is no fear about him; he has over-exerted himself, and
his immersion in salt water has for the time deprived him of his senses;
but stay, I see you have a kettle boiling on the hearth. It is time now
to pour some h