to her dress.  This fragment bore the words in gilt letters, ‘Bank Notes;’ below were the initials ‘F.H.B.’  The sight drew forth general expressions of pity:  but pity gave place to indignation when the district surgeon joined the group, and after a careful examination of the body, said slowly, ’I suspect—­I more than suspect—­I am almost positive, that this lady reached the shore alive.  The winds and waves have not destroyed her.  She has perished by the hand of another.  Look here,’ and he pointed to a small dark rim round the neck, ’this is the effect of strangulation; and my belief is that the corpse before us is that of a murdered woman.’

“The coroner of the district was summoned, a jury empanneled, and the simple facts relative to the discovery of the bodies of the woman and infant were briefly placed on record.  Few cared to speak openly.  All had an interest in saying as little as possible.  ’Return an open verdict, gentlemen; return an open verdict by all means,’ suggested the wary official; ’that is the shortest course you can adopt; safe and perfectly legal; it decides nothing, contradicts nothing, concludes nothing.’  No advice could be more palatable to the parties he addressed.  ‘Found dead,’ was the ready response; ’but by what means, drowning or otherwise; there is no evidence to show.’

“The coroner was delighted.

“’Precisely so; quite sufficient.  My gig, and a glass of brandy and water.’”

* * * * *

“No one claimed the bodies.  Early interment was necessary; and a few hours after the inquest was concluded, mother and child were consigned to their parent earth.

“Six weeks afterward, an elderly man, with a most imperious manner and a foreign accent, came down to the village and asked countless questions relative to the shipwreck.  The unhappy lady, he said, was his niece; and earnest were the inquiries he made touching a large sum of money, which, to his certain knowledge, she had about her when she went on shipboard.  Of this money, as a matter of course, no satisfactory tidings were forthcoming.  He then became violent; called the village a nest of pirates; cursed the inhabitants without mercy; hoped that heaven’s lightnings would speedily fall, and raze the hamlet to the ground; and indulged in a variety of comments, some just, some foolish, and all angry.

“But with all his anxiety about his niece, and all his burning indignation against her plunderers, he never visited the unhappy lady’s grave; never directed a stone to be placed over her; never deplored her fate; never uttered a remark about her infant, save and except an avowal of his unbounded satisfaction that it had perished with the mother-his ever-recurring subject of regret was, not that he had lost his niece, but that he had lost her money!

“Oh world! how base are thy calculations, how sordid thy conclusions!  The young, the fair, the helpless, the innocent may perish, it matters not.  Loss of relatives, of children, of country, of character, all may be borne with complacency but—­loss of money!