“My good sir,” said Frank, blushing, “you owe your life not to me.  I would have helped if I could; but was not thought worthy by our sons of Anak here.  Your actual preserver was a young girl.”

And Frank told him the story.

“Whew!  I hope she won’t expect me to marry her as payment.—­Handsome?”

“Beautiful,” said Frank.

“Money?”

“The village schoolmistress.”

“Clever?”

“A sort of half-baked body,” said Heale.

“A very puzzling intellect,” said Frank

“Ah—­well—­that’s a fair excuse for declining the honour.  I can’t be expected to marry a frantic party, as you called me down stairs just now, Doctor.”

“I, sir?”

“Yes, I heard; no offence, though, my good sir,—­but I’ve the ears of a fox.  I hope really, though, that she is none the worse for her heroic flights.”

“How is she this morning, Mr. Heale?”

“Well—­poor thing, a little light-headed last night:  but kindly when I went in last.”

“Whew!  I hope she has not fallen in love with me.  She may fancy me her property—­a private waif and stray.  Better send for the Coast-guard officer, and let him claim me as belonging to the Admiralty, as flotsom, jetsom, and lagend; for I was all three last night.”

“You were, indeed, sir,” said Frank, who began to be a little tired of this levity; “and very thankful to Heaven you ought to be.”

Frank spake this in a somewhat professional tone of voice; at which the stranger arched his eyebrows, screwed his lips up, and laid his ears back, like a horse when he meditates a kick,

“You must be better acquainted with my affairs than I am, my dear sir, if you are able to state that fact.—­Doctor!  I hear a patient coming into the surgery.”

“Extraordinary power of hearing, to be sure,” said Heale, toddling down stairs, while the stranger went on, looking Frank full in the face.

“Now that old fogy’s gone down stairs, my dear sir, let us come to an understanding at the beginning of our acquaintance.  Of course, you’re bound by your cloth to say that sort of thing to me, just as I am bound by it not to swear in your company:  but you’ll allow me to remark, that it would be rather trying even to your faith, if you were to be thrown ashore with nothing in the world but an old jersey and a bag of tobacco, two hundred miles short of the port where you hoped to land with fifteen hundred well-earned pounds in your pocket.”

“My dear sir,” said Frank, after a pause, “whatsoever comes from our Father’s hand must be meant in love.  ’The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’”

A quaint wince passed over the stranger’s face.