to whom
the sick of every station might go for healing. In short space the
inevitable came upon us: punts put in for the doctor at unseasonable
hours, desperately reckless of weather; schooners beat up with men lying
ill or injured in the forecastles; the folk of the neighbouring ports
brought their afflicted to be miraculously restored, and ingenuously
quartered their dying upon us. A wretched multitude emerged from the
hovels--crying, "Heal us!" And to every varied demand the doctor freely
responded, smiling heartily, God bless him! spite of wind and weather:
ready, active, merry, untiring--sad but when the only gift he bore was
that of tender consolation.

* * * * *

One night there came a maid from Punch Bowl Harbour. My sister sent her
to the shop, where the doctor was occupied with the accounts of our
business, myself to keep him company. 'Twas a raw, black night; and she
entered with a gust of wind, which fluttered the doctor's papers, set
the lamp flaring, and, at last, escaped by way of the stove to the gale
from which it had strayed.

"Is you the doctor?" she gasped.

She stood with her back against the door, one hand still on the knob and
the other shading her eyes--a slender slip of a girl, her head covered
with a shawl, now dripping. Whisps of wet black hair clung to her
forehead, and rain-drops lay in the flushed hollows of her cheeks.

"I am," the doctor answered, cheerily, rising from his work.

"Well, zur," said she, "I'm Tim Hodd's maid, zur, an' I'm just come from
the Punch Bowl in the bait-skiff, zur--for healin'."

"And what, my child," asked the doctor, sympathetically, "may be the
matter with you?"

Looking back--with the added knowledge that I have--it seems to me that
he had no need to ask the question. The flush and gasp told the story
well enough, quite well enough: the maid was dying of consumption.

"Me lights is floatin', zur," she answered.

"Your lights?"

"Ay, zur," laying a hand on her chest. "They're floatin' wonderful high.
I been tryin' t' kape un down; but, zur, 'tis no use, at all."

With raised eyebrows the doctor turned to me. "What does she mean,
Davy," he inquired, "by her 'lights'?"

"I'm not well knowin'," said I; "but if 'tis what _we_ calls 'lights,'
'tis what _you_ calls 'lungs.'"

The doctor turned sadly to the maid.

"I been takin' shot, zur, t' weight un down," she went on; "but, zur,
'tis no use, at all. An' Jim Butt's