sixteen, and took care of his mother, a ship went
to pieces down there on the island. It was one of the worst storms that
ever whistled, and though crowds were on the shore, it was impossible to
reach her. They could see the poor wretches hanging in the rigging, and
dropping one by one, and they could only stay and sicken, for the surf
stove the boats, and they didn't know then how to send out ropes on
rockets or on cannon-balls, and so the night fell, and the people wrung
their hands and left the sea to its prey, and felt as if blue sky could
never come again. And with the bright, keen morning not a vestige of the
ship, but here a spar and there a door, and on the side of a sand-hill
a great dog watching over a little child that he'd kept warm all night.
Dan, he'd got up at turn of tide, and walked down,--the sea running over
the road knee-deep,--for there was too much swell for boats; and when
day broke, he found the little girl, and carried her up to town. He
didn't take her home, for he saw that what clothes she had were the very
finest,--made as delicately,--with seams like the hair-strokes on that
heart's-ease there; and he concluded that he couldn't bring her up as
she ought to be. So he took her round to the rich men, and represented
that she was the child of a lady, and that a poor fellow like
himself--for Dan was older than his years, you see--couldn't do her
justice: she was a slight little thing, and needed dainty training
and fancy food, maybe a matter of seven years old, and she spoke some
foreign language, and perhaps she didn't speak it plain, for nobody knew
what it was. However, everybody was very much interested, and everybody
was willing to give and to help, but nobody wanted to take her, and the
upshot of it was that Dan refused all their offers and took her himself.

His mother'd been in to our house all the afternoon before, and she'd
kept taking her pipe out of her mouth,--she had the asthma, and
smoked,--and kept sighing.

"This storm's going to bring me something," says she, in a mighty
miserable tone. "I'm sure of it!"

"No harm, I hope, Miss Devereux," said mother.

"Well, Rhody,"--mother's father, he was a queer kind,--called his girls
all after the thirteen States, and there being none left for Uncle Mat,
he called him after the state of matrimony,--"Well, Rhody," she replied,
rather dismally, and knocking the ashes out of the bowl, "I don't know;
but I'll have faith to believe that the