ome, he got cured by a little black-eyed French girl on the Labrador
coast."

"A very agreeable prescription, no doubt," quoth the Doctor, turning to
me. "How do you think it would suit your case?"

"It does n't become the patient to choose his own nostrums," said I,
laughing. "But I wonder, Doctor, that you have n't long ago tested the
value of this by an experiment upon yourself."

"Physicians are proverbially shy of their own medicines," said he.

"Well, you see," continued the Skipper, "we had a rough run down the
Labrador shore; rainstorms and fogs so thick you could cut 'em up into
junks with your jack-knife. At last we reached a small fishing station
away down where the sun does n't sleep in summer, but just takes a bit
of a nap at midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive,
and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant,
who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few
potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of
grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country
all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing
but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with
now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked pleasant
to our poor sick passenger, who for some days had been longing for land.
The Frenchman gave him a neat little room looking out on the harbor, all
alive with fishermen and Indians hunting seals; and to my notion no
place is very dull where you can see the salt-water and the ships at
anchor on it, or scudding over it with sails set in a stiff breeze, and
where you can watch its changes of lights and colors in fair and foul
weather, morning and night. The family was made up of the Frenchman,
his wife, and his daughter,--a little witch of a girl, with bright black
eyes lighting up her brown, good-natured face like lamps in a binnacle.
They all took a mighty liking to young Wilson, and were ready to do
anything for him. He was soon able to walk about; and we used to see
him with the Frenchman's daughter strolling along the shore and among
the mosses, talking with her in her own language. Many and many a time,
as we sat in our boats under the rocks, we could hear her merry laugh
ringing down to us.

"We stayed at the station about three weeks; and when we got ready to
sail I called at the Frenchman's to let Wilson know when to come aboard.