“Good morning, Doctor,” quoth he, as his host entered.  “Very kind of you, this.  Hope I haven’t turned a better man than myself out of his bed.”

“Delighted to see you so well.  Very near drowned, though.  We were pumping at your lungs for a full half hour.”

“Ah? nothing, though, for an experienced professional man like you!”

“Hum! speaks well for your discrimination,” says Heale, flattered.  “Very well-spoken young person, though his beard is a bit wild.—­How did you know, then, that I was a doctor?”

“By the reverend looks of you, sir.  Besides, I smelt the rhubarb and senna all the way up-stairs, and knew that I’d fallen among professional brethren;—­

  “’Oh, then this valiant mariner,
    Which sailed across the sea,
  He came home to his own sweetheart,
    With his heart so full of glee;

  With his heart so full of glee, sir,
    And his pockets full of gold,
  And his bag of drugget, with many a nugget,
    As heavy as he could hold.’

“Don’t you wish yours was, Doctor?”

“Eh, eh, eh,” sniggered Heale.

“Mine was last night.  Now, Doctor, let’s have a glass of brandy-and-water, hot with, and an hour’s more sleep; and then kick me out, and into the workhouse.  Was anybody else saved from the wreck last night?”

“Nobody, sir,” said Heale; and said “sir,” because, in spite of the stranger’s rough looks, his accent,—­or rather, his no-accent,—­showed him that he had fallen in with a very different, and probably a very superior stamp of man to himself; in the light of which conviction (and being withal a good-natured old soul), he went down and mixed him a stiff glass of brandy-and water, answering his wife’s remonstrances by—­

“The party up-stairs is a bit of a frantic party, certainly; but he is certainly a very superior party, and has the true gentleman about him, any one can see.  Besides, he’s shipwrecked, as you and I may be any day; and what’s like brandy-and-water?”

“I should like to know when I’m like to be shipwrecked, or you either;” says Mrs. Heale, in a tone slightly savouring of indignation and contempt.  “You think of nothing but brandy-and-water.”  But she let the doctor take the glass upstairs, nevertheless.

A few minutes afterwards, Frank came in, and inquired for the shipwrecked man.

“Well enough in body, sir; and rather requires your skill than mine,” said the old time-server.  “Won’t you walk up?”

So up Frank was shown.

The stranger was sitting up in bed.  “Capital, your brandy is, Doctor,—­Ah, sir,” seeing Frank, “it is very kind of you, I am sure, to call on me!  I presume you are the clergyman?”

But before Frank could answer, Heale had broken forth into loud praises of him, setting forth how the stranger owed his life entirely to his superhuman strength and courage.

“’Pon my word, sir,” said the stranger,—­looking them both over and over, through and through, as if to settle how much of all this he was to believe,—­“I am deeply indebted to you for your gallantry.  I only wish it had been employed on a better subject.”