heavin a bit, Tom!” Having removed a wooden bar, he stands in the opening, braving out the storm.  “A screachin nor’easter this, Tom—­what’r ye sighted away, eh!” he concludes.  He is—­to use a vulgar term—­aghast with surprise.  It was Tom Dasher’s watch to-night; but no Tom stands before him.  “Hallo!—­From whence came you?” he enquires of the stranger, with an air of anxious surprise.  He bids them come in, for the wind carries the sand rushing into his domicile.

“We are shipwrecked men in distress,” says the passenger—­the wrecker, with an air of kindness, motioning them to sit down:  “Our party have been swallowed up in the surf a short distance below, and we are the only survivors here seeking shelter.”

“Zounds you say—­God be merciful!” interrupts the hardy wrecker, ere the stranger had time to finish his sentence.  “It was Tom’s look-out to-night.  Its ollers the way wi’ him—­he gits turned in, and sleeps as niver a body see’d, and when time comes to unbunk himself, one disn’t know whether ’ts wind or Tom’s snoarin cracks hardest.  Well, well,—­God help us!  Think ye now, if wife and I, didn’t, in a half sort of dream, fancy folks murmuring and crying on the beach about twelve, say.  But the wind and the surf kept up such a piping, and Tom said ther war nought a sight at sundown.”  With a warm expression of good intention did our hardy host set about the preparing something to cheer their drooping spirits.  “Be at home there wi’ me,” says he; “and if things b’nt as fine as they might be, remember we’re poor folks, and have many a hard knock on the reefs for what we drag out.  Excuse the bits o’ things ye may see about; and wife ’ll be down in a fip and do the vary best she can fo’h ye.”  He had a warm heart concealed beneath that rough exterior; he had long followed the daring profession, seen much suffering, lightened many a sorrowing heart.  Bustling about among old boxes and bags, he soon drew forth a lot of blankets and quilts, which he spread upon the broad brick hearth, at the same time keeping up a series of questions they found difficult to answer, so rapidly were they put.  They had indeed fallen into the hands of a good Samaritan, who would dress their wounds with his best balms.

“An’ now I tak it ye must be famished; so my old woman must get up an’ help mak ye comfortable,” says he, bringing forth a black tea-kettle, and filling it from a pail that stood on a shelf near the fire-frame.  He will hang it on the fire.  He had no need of calling the good dame; for as suddenly as mysteriously does the chubby figure of a motherly-looking female of some forty years shoot from the before described opening, and greeting the strangers with a hearty welcome, set about preparing something to relieve their exhaustion.  A gentle smile pervades her little red face, so simply expressive; her peaked cap shines so brightly in contrast with the black ribbon with which she secures it under her mole-bedecked chin; and her short homespun frock sets