get a little driftwood
for fuel. That is the story of many places on this coast, after the
people have exhausted the scanty supply of wood."

She evidently thought it marvelous that such desolate bits of rock should
have found human limpets to cling to them and be able to support life
after a fashion. Then she began to look at the man who was lying in the
bottom of the boat. Although he was very pale and weak he looked
contentedly at the sky and the fleecy clouds, and when his eyes caught
hers he smiled bashfully. And the instinct then moved her, which lies in
every proper feminine heart, however dormantly, to mother something or
somebody.

The screaming feathered life no longer interested her, nor the surging of
the crested waves against the cliffs, nor the cleaving of the water by
our little ship. She took a step forward and sat down on the rough
boards, beside this wreck of manhood we were bringing in, unmindful of
the dried fish-scales that would flake off upon her skirts. It was surely
an unconscious movement of hers when her hand went out and rested on the
fisherman's rough paw.

I saw him stare at her, his eyes filled with wonderment and gratitude,
for men of these places know little of tender care.

"How do you feel now?" she asked him, gently.

"I feels like I once did after a day an' a night on th' ice," he replied,
slowly. "I mind there wuz four on us to a small pan as had broke loose.
An' two they give out with th' cold, an' wuz dead afore mornin', but th'
steamer as had lost us in th' fog she jist sudden loomed up, all ter
once, an' took Tom Pilley an' me off an' we wuz saved. I mistrust that's
jist how I feels again now."

The girl turned her eyes towards me, and they were moist. She had
understood the man and realized the time he had spent in despairing
resignation, with the image of death ever before him during the long
battle against cold and starvation. Then life had come, like a flash, out
of the smothering mists, and soon he had been ready to struggle on again.
And it was evident that the dreary prospect of such an existence
prolonged was enough to make him happy once more.

After this she remained silent for a long time. Hitherto, in her
existence, sorrow and suffering had appeared like some other wonderful
things occurring in nature, such as the forces holding atoms together or
compelling bodies to gravitate. One knew of such things, of course, yet
one was unconscious of them. Now they were