ate the birds, and the hencoop was
split into firewood with a hatchet. It is possible that a man (supposing
he happened to be on deck at the time of the accident) might have
floated ashore on that hencoop. He might. I admit it is improbable, but
there was the man--and for days, nay, for weeks--it didn't enter our
heads that we had amongst us the only living soul that had escaped
from that disaster. The man himself, even when he learned to speak
intelligibly, could tell us very little. He remembered he had felt
better (after the ship had anchored, I suppose), and that the darkness,
the wind, and the rain took his breath away. This looks as if he had
been on deck some time during that night. But we mustn't forget he had
been taken out of his knowledge, that he had been sea-sick and battened
down below for four days, that he had no general notion of a ship or of
the sea, and therefore could have no definite idea of what was happening
to him. The rain, the wind, the darkness he knew; he understood the
bleating of the sheep, and he remembered the pain of his wretchedness
and misery, his heartbroken astonishment that it was neither seen nor
understood, his dismay at finding all the men angry and all the women
fierce. He had approached them as a beggar, it is true, he said; but in
his country, even if they gave nothing, they spoke gently to beggars.
The children in his country were not taught to throw stones at those
who asked for compassion. Smith's strategy overcame him completely. The
wood-lodge presented the horrible aspect of a dungeon. What would be
done to him next?... No wonder that Amy Foster appeared to his eyes
with the aureole of an angel of light. The girl had not been able to
sleep for thinking of the poor man, and in the morning, before the
Smiths were up, she slipped out across the back yard. Holding the door
of the wood-lodge ajar, she looked in and extended to him half a loaf of
white bread--'such bread as the rich eat in my country,' he used to say.

"At this he got up slowly from amongst all sorts of rubbish, stiff,
hungry, trembling, miserable, and doubtful. 'Can you eat this?'
she asked in her soft and timid voice. He must have taken her for a
'gracious lady.' He devoured ferociously, and tears were falling on the
crust. Suddenly he dropped the bread, seized her wrist, and imprinted a
kiss on her hand. She was not frightened. Through his forlorn condition
she had observed that he was good-looking. She shut