avages
would come in from the cold, and sit squatting in the back part of the
church, listening stolidly to the words that had no meaning for them.

But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. Such a wreck as that which then
went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to the poor and
needy settlers in the wilderness where so few good things ever came.
For the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next morning
the beach was strewn with wreckage--boxes and barrels, chests and spars,
timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful harvest, to be gathered up
by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent them.

The name of the bark, as found painted on some of the water barrels
and sea chests, was the Bristol Merchant, and she no doubt hailed from
England.

As was said, the only soul who escaped alive off the wreck was Tom
Chist.

A settler, a fisherman named Matt Abrahamson, and his daughter Molly,
found Tom. He was washed up on the beach among the wreckage, in a great
wooden box which had been securely tied around with a rope and lashed
between two spars--apparently for better protection in beating through
the surf. Matt Abrahamson thought he had found something of more than
usual value when he came upon this chest; but when he cut the cords
and broke open the box with his broadax, he could not have been more
astonished had he beheld a salamander instead of a baby of nine or ten
months old lying half smothered in the blankets that covered the bottom
of the chest.

Matt Abrahamson's daughter Molly had had a baby who had died a month or
so before. So when she saw the little one lying there in the bottom of
the chest, she cried out in a great loud voice that the Good Man had
sent her another baby in place of her own.

The rain was driving before the hurricane storm in dim, slanting sheets,
and so she wrapped up the baby in the man's coat she wore and ran off
home without waiting to gather up any more of the wreckage.

It was Parson Jones who gave the foundling his name. When the news
came to his ears of what Matt Abrahamson had found he went over to the
fisherman's cabin to see the child. He examined the clothes in which the
baby was dressed. They were of fine linen and handsomely stitched, and
the reverend gentleman opined that the foundling's parents must have
been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's neck and
under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner,