sh I could help you."

"You do?" he answered; and then he bent himself to the work before him,
with a sense of its responsibility which exalted it into a deed of the
purest chivalry.

* * * * *

PART II.

The widow Smiley did not live on Clatsop Plains. Ever since the great
storm at Christmas, when her house was carried off its foundations by
the high tide, she had refused to go back to it. When the neighbors
heard of her husband's death, they took her over to Astoria to see him
buried, for there was no home to bring him to, and she had never
returned. Smiley, they say, was drowned where he fell, in the streets of
Astoria, that night of the high tide, being too intoxicated to get up.
But nobody told the widow that. They said to her that he stumbled off
the wharf, in the dark, and that the tide brought him ashore, and that
was enough for her to know.

She was staying with the family at the landing when the news came, two
days after his death. Joe Chillis brought her things down to the
landing, and had them sent over to Astoria, where she decided to stay;
and afterward she sold the farm and bought a small house in town, where,
after two or three months, she opened a school for young children. And
the women of the place had all taken to making much of Joe Chillis, in
consideration of his conduct during that memorable time, and of his
sufferings in consequence; for he was laid up a long while afterward
with that hurt in his shoulder, and the consequences of his exposure.
Mrs. Smiley always treated him with the highest respect, and did not
conceal that she had a great regard for him, if he _was_ nothing but an
old mountain man, who had had a squaw wife; which regard, under the
circumstances, was not to be wondered at.

Widow Smiley was young, and pretty, and _smart_; and Captain Rumway, the
pilot, was dreadfully taken up with her, and nobody would blame her for
taking a second husband, who was able and willing to provide well for
her. If it was to be a match, nobody would speak a word against it. It
was said that he had left off drinking on her account, and was building
a fine house up on the hill, on one of the prettiest lots in town. Such
was the gossip about Mrs. Smiley, a year and a half after the night of
the high tide.

It was the afternoon of a July day, in Astoria; and, since we have given
the reader so dismal a picture of December, let us, in justice, say a
word about t