“Not more ’n three hunder yards out.  She’d break up soon ’f there was no one to hender.  Wot a show we’d hev.”

“I reckon,” growled the shorter man.  “Is your name Peter?”

“Aye.  I belong yer.  Allers lived about high-water mark.  Whar’d ye come from?”

The only answer was a sharp and excited exclamation.  Neither of them had been paying any attention to the bay side of the bar and, while they were gazing at the wreck, a very pretty little yacht had cast anchor, close in shore, and then, with the help of a row-boat, quite a party of ladies and gentlemen—­the latter somewhat young-looking—­had made their way to the land, and were now hurrying forward.  They did not pay the slightest attention to Peter and his companion, but, in a few minutes more, they were trying to talk to those poor people on the sea-beach.  Trying, but not succeeding very well, for the wreck had been a Bremen bark with an assorted cargo and some fifty passengers, all emigrants.  German seemed their only tongue, and none of Mrs. Kinzer’s pleasure-party spoke German.

“Too bad,” Ford Foster was saying, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it seemed to close with—­“pauvre enfant.”

“French!” he exclaimed.  “Why, they look as Dutch as any of the rest.  Come on, Annie, let’s try and speak to them.”

The rest followed a good deal like a flock of sheep, and it was a sad enough scene which lay before them.  No lives had been lost in the wreck, though there had been a great deal of suffering among the poor passengers, cooped up between-decks with the hatches closed, while the storm lasted.  Nobody drowned, indeed, but all dreadfully soaked in the surf in getting ashore; and among the rest had been the fair-haired child, now lying there on his mother’s lap, so pinched and blue, and seemingly so lifeless.

French, were they?  Yes and no; for the father, a tall, stout young man, who looked like a farmer, told Ford they were from Alsace, and spoke both tongues.

“The child, was it sick?”

Not so much sick as dying of starvation and exposure.

Oh, such a sad, pleading look as the poor mother lifted to the moist eyes of Mrs. Kinzer as the portly widow bent over the silent boy.  Such a pretty child he must have been, and not over two years old; but the salt water was in his tangled curls now, and his poor lips were parted in a weak, sick way, that spoke of utter exhaustion.

“Can anything be done, mother?”

“Yes, Dabney; you and Ham, and Ford and Frank, go to the yacht, quick as you can, and bring the spirit-heater, lamp and all, and bread and milk, and every dry napkin and towel you can find.  Bring Keziah’s shawl.”

Such quick time they made across that sand-bar!

And they were none too soon; for, as they came running down to their boat, a mean, slouching sort of fellow walked rapidly away from it.