is disclosed a finely oval face, glowing with features of much regularity, large dark eyes of great softness, and silky hair, laid in heavy wavy folds across a beautifully arched brow-to which is added a sweet smile that ever and anon plays over her slightly olive countenance.  There, boldly outlined, is the unmistakeable guide to a frank and gentle nature.  For several minutes does she listen to the honest woman’s recital of the sad event, which is suspended by the passenger making his appearance.  The wrecker’s wife introduces him by motioning her hand, and saying, “This is the kind lady of whose goodness I spoke so last night.”  Anxiously does she gather from the stranger each and every incident of the voyage:  this done, she will go to the house where lay the dead, our good Dame Stores leading the way, talking from the very honesty of her heart the while.  In a small dilapidated dwelling on the bleak sands, the dead lay.  Children and old men linger about the door,—­now they make strange mutterings, and walk away, as if in fear.  Our messengers of mercy have entered the abode of the dead.  The wrecker’s wife says, “They are to be buried to-morrow, ma’am;” while the lady, with singular firmness, glances her eye along the row of male bodies, counting them one by one.  She has brought shrouds, in which to bury them like Christians.

“Them three females is here, ma’am,” says Dame Stores, touching the lady on the elbow, as she proceeds to uncover the bodies.  The passenger did, indeed, tell our Lady of Mercy there was one handsome lady from Carolina.  One by one she views their blanched and besanded features.

“A bonny figure that, mum; I lay she’s bin a handsome in her day,” with honest simplicity remarks Dame Stores, as, bent over the lifeless body of Franconia, she turns back the sheet, carefully.  “Yes,” is the quick reply:  the philanthropic woman’s keen eye scans along the body from head to foot.  Dame Stores will part the silken hair from off that cold brow, and smooth it with her hand.  Suddenly our lady’s eyes dart forth anxiety; she recognises some familiar feature, and trembles.  The rescued seaman had been quietly viewing the bodies, as if to distinguish their different persons, when a wrecker, who had assisted in removing the bodies, entered the room and approached him, “Ah!” exclaims the seaman, suddenly, “yonder’s poor Jack Higgins.”  He points to a besanded body at the right, the arms torn and bent partly over the breast, adding, “Jack had a good heart, he had.”  Turning half round, the wrecker replies, “That ’un had this ’un fast grappled in his arms; it was a time afore we got ’um apart.”