the gully, might at a
first glance be taken for a large and loosely-constructed bird's nest.
The Collector's keen eyes made it out to be a shanty of timber roofed
with shingles and barely overtopping a wood pile.

"Wreckwood, eh?"

"A good amount of it ought to be comin' in, after the gale."

"Then where's your hook?"--for the wreckwood gatherers along this part
of the coast carry long gaffs to hook the flotsam and drag it above
reach of the waves.

"Left it up the bank," said the old man shortly. After a moment he
pulled himself together for an explanation, hollowed his palms around
his mouth, and bawled above the boom of the surf. "I'm old. I don't
carry weight more'n I need to. When a log comes in, my darter spies it
an' tells me. She's mons'rous quick-sighted for wood an' such like--
though good for nothin' else." (A pause.) "No, I'm hard on her; she
can cook clams."

"You were looking for clams?" Captain Vyell scrutinised the man's face.
It was a patriarchal face, strikingly handsome and not much wrinkled;
the skin delicately tanned and extraordinarily transparent.
Somehow this transparency puzzled him. "Hungry?" he asked quickly; and
as quickly added, "Starving for food, that's what you are."

"It's the Lord's will," answered the old man.

The coach had come to a halt a dozen paces away. The child within it
could hear nothing of this conversation; but to the end of his life his
memory kept vivid the scene and the two figures in it--his father, in
close-fitting riding-coat of blue, with body braced, leaning sideways a
little against the wind, and a characteristic hint of the cavalryman
about the slope of the thigh; the old wreck-picker standing just forward
of the bay's shoulder and looking up, with blown hair and patient eyes.
Memory recalled even the long slant of the bay's shoulder--a perfectly
true detail, for the horse was of pure English race and bred by the
Collector himself.

After this, as he remembered, some command must have been given, for
Manasseh climbed down, opened the coach door and drew from under the
seat a box, of which he raised the lid, disclosing things good to eat--
among them a pasty with a crisp brown crust.

The wreck-picker broke off a piece of the pasty and wrapped it in a
handkerchief--and memory recalled, as with a small shock of surprise,
that the handkerchief was clean. The old man, though ragged enough to
scare the crows, was clean from his bare head to his