It was more easily said than done.  The two old women did their best, but their touch was clumsy and their help slight, compared to Tardif’s.  I was thoroughly worn out before I was in bed.  But it was a great deal to find myself there, safe and warm, instead of on the cold, hard pebbles on the beach.  Mother Renouf put my arm to rest upon a pillow, and bathed and fomented my ankle till it felt much easier.

Never, never shall I forget that night.  I could not sleep; but I suppose my mind wandered a little.  Hundreds of times I felt myself down on the shore, lying helplessly, while great green waves curled themselves over, and fell just within reach of me, ready to swallow me up, yet always missing me.  Then I was back again in my own home in Adelaide, on my father’s sheep-farm, and he was still alive, and with no thought but how to make every thing bright and gladsome for me; and hundreds of times I saw the woman who was afterward to be my step-mother, stealing up to the door and trying to get in to him and me.  Sometimes I caught myself sobbing aloud, and then Tardif’s voice, whispering at the door to ask how mam’zelle was, brought me back to consciousness.  Now and then I looked round, fancying I heard my mother’s voice speaking to me, and I saw only the wrinkled, yellow face of his mother, nodding drowsily in her seat by the fire.  Twice Tardif brought me a cup of tea, freshly made.  I could not distinctly made out who he was, or where I was, but I tried to speak loudly enough for him to hear me thank him.

I was very thankful when the first gleam of daylight shone into my room.  It seemed to bring clearness to my brain.

“Mam’zelle,” said Tardif, coming to my side very early in his fisherman’s dress, “I am going to fetch a doctor.”

“But it is Sunday,” I answered faintly.  I knew that no boatman put out to sea willingly on a Sunday from Sark; and the last fatal accident, being on a Sunday, had deepened their reluctance.

“It will be right, mam’zelle,” he answered, with glowing eyes.  “I have no fear.”

“Do not be long away, Tardif,” I said, sobbing.

“Not one moment longer than I can help,” he replied.

PART THE SECOND.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

Dr. Martin Dobree.

My name is Martin Dobree.  Martin or Doctor Martin I was called throughout Guernsey.  It will be necessary to state a few particulars about my family and position, before I proceed with my part of this narrative.

My father was Dr. Dobree.  He belonged to one of the oldest families in the island—­a family of distinguished pur sang; but our branch of it had been growing poorer instead of richer during the last three or four generations.  We had been gravitating steadily downward.