nd appeared quite dead,
said the sailors; but some women thought they discerned signs of life
in her, and the stranger was carried across the sand-hills into the
fisherman's hut. How beautiful and fair she was! certainly she must
be a great lady.

They laid her upon the humble bed that boasted not a yard of linen;
but there was a woollen coverlet, and that would keep the occupant
warm.

Life returned to her, but she was delirious, and knew nothing of what
had happened, or where she was; and it was better so, for everything
she loved and valued lay buried in the sea. It was with her ship as
with the vessel in the song of "The King's Son of England."

"Alas, it was a grief to see
How the gallant ship sank speedily."

Portions of wreck and fragments of wood drifted ashore, and they were
all that remained of what had been the ship. The wind still drove
howling over the coast. For a few moments the strange lady seemed to
rest; but she awoke in pain, and cries of anguish and fear came from
her lips. She opened her wonderfully beautiful eyes, and spoke a few
words, but none understood her.

And behold, as a reward for the pain and sorrow she had undergone, she
held in her arms a new-born child, the child that was to have rested
upon a gorgeous couch, surrounded by silken curtains, in the sumptuous
home. It was to have been welcomed with joy to a life rich in all the
goods of the earth; and now Providence had caused it to be born in
this humble retreat, and not even a kiss did it receive from its
mother.

The fisher's wife laid the child upon the mother's bosom, and it
rested on a heart that beat no more, for she was dead. The child who
was to be nursed by wealth and fortune, was cast into the world,
washed by the sea among the sand-hills, to partake the fate and heavy
days of the poor. And here again comes into our mind the old song of
the English king's son, in which mention is made of the customs
prevalent at that time, when knights and squires plundered those who
had been saved from shipwreck.

The ship had been stranded some distance south of Nissum Bay. The
hard, inhuman days in which, as we have stated, the inhabitants of the
Jutland shores did evil to the shipwrecked, were long past. Affection
and sympathy and self-sacrifice for the unfortunate were to be found,
as they are to be found in our own time, in many a brilliant example.
The dying mother and the unfortunate child would have found succour
and