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OF THE

“A

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

PART I.

H well!" said I, wearily, finding

the storm was likely yet to last, "'t is an ill wind that blows nobody good." But did I have an idea of what I was saying?

The equinoctial gale had been roaring through the heavens, driving the great loose, gray clouds before it, and tearing them into sheets of blinding rain, till the whole round earth seemed only wrapped in storm. The wind came whistling along the street, shook off a flock of yellow leaves, and, letting them frolic in their freedom a moment and fancy themselves a part of the gale, suddenly with a blast drove them down, and they became a part of the sodden soil; then, rising with a cry of havoc, it dragged the vines from the lattices, snatched the swallows' nests from under the eaves and scattered them into the street, and, being caught itself in the pitfall of the chimneys, came hoarsely sighing and crying downward till it fanned the blaze of the coal into a fury.

What a blessing a full gay household would have been on such a day! Then we could have heard with equanimity that the tides had risen over the roofs on Channel Island, or that people were going about in boats on the Shore Street; we could have gone up to the attic windows with the glass, and have seen the strange dark heads and white horns swimming through the current; we should have swarmed round the Doctor, when he came in and brought a gust behind him, with warm slippers and dressing-gown, and cheeriest sympathy and comfort, till we coaxed him into believing the cold September day the happiest of all the year; we should have sat round the fire, and told stories of shipwreck, till the wind fell at midnight, and through the open curtains a star startled us sparkling on the edge of a wind-blown ragged cloud.

But that had been in other times. Now we must make ourselves content on past cheer, and be warmed with remembrance of ancient autumn gales. So the Doctor sighed, and smoked, and calculated eclipses, as if to put asleep the great care in his heart, and every once in a while informed his little wife of something concerning the tangent of A minus the right ascension, and the little wife made believe it was all English to her, looked out at the weather and in at the fire, and comfortably made up her mind that it might storm till Christmas day, so long as it gave her the good of that rare presence in the chimney-corner during all the long evening. Between his patients, and his running over to Netherby, and up to court to attend the trial there, he had grown to be a stranger to his own fireside; but no one on such a night would think of sending for the doctor except upon a case of life and death,—and for that, of course, he could be spared.

With such thought I turned again to the outer view, watching a passenger beat up against the wind, and struggle lest his umbrella should lose head and capsize, wondering would it be so bad by and by, and were the gale going to lift under all that breaking sweep of brightening sky. But there was only one eye in the whole town could have told me that, and it belonged to the gilded chanticleer, perched high on the tip of the spire that stretched above the streets, looking straight before him steadily out to sea, and strutting defiantly on his steeple-point in the very teeth of the wind. From his perch he saw the dark river-mouth, and the white crest of the bar ridging across it; he saw the low lines of opening coast, and all the foamy network of breaker, and the ponderous plunge of the sucking surf that changed the shore with every shock;

and between and far beyond, till it met the gray sky and was lost in it, the great expanse of the seas, wide and wild, the dark field everywhere tossing and sinking with jets and sprays and flying falls of foam, and now and then some giant of a chance wave looming like a phantom, and powdering itself in mist upon the eager wind. If, beside all this evanescence, this yeasty commotion and change, he saw aught else, saw the fishing-craft in spite of themselves huddled in the offing, yet gallantly challenging the tempest, or any fated bark, its broken masts scarcely raking the dim horizon line, drifting helplessly towards the treacherous land that lay in wait beneath its mask of green and shifting shallows; if the gilded chanticleer saw such a sight as this, he kept his own counsel, and, unless you suspected it from the way in which he still looked steadily into the east, dropped no hint of spent sailors clinging to the shrouds, or washed away into restless graves with every returning billow.

As for me, too many of my kindred had been rocked to their last sleep in that cruel sea to make it pleasant for any lingering thought. Then, too, I was longing to know how it went with Lucian. I busied myself about the fire, stole the Doctor's table and left him with pencil suspended in air, and rewarded him for the submission with which he received that despotic act by playing the sweet, old-fashioned tunes of our youth to him till the place was dark save for the glow of the fire thrown upon the ceiling, and, despite the whistling of the storm without, all the atmosphere of the room was quiet and dreamy.

At that point Elizabeth opened the door to tell us that tea was ready. At the same moment, above the storm, above the sound of the piano, the note of Elizabeth's voice, the cheerful hiss of the urn, fell the peal of the knocker.

The Doctor answered it in person. A man, covered with tarpaulins, who had brought his horse up the sidewalk and close to the door-stone, bent from the darkness, and announced his errand.

A vessel had gone to pieces on the beach, he said, -a whaler apparently, that had sailed round the world to be wrecked in sight of her own wharf at last; some men had been washed up, perhaps drowned, perhaps not; he had ridden off without waiting, would the Doctor come and see?

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"On such a night! Three miles!" I exclaimed, feeling the happy lighted tea-room undergo the eclipse he had been all the afternoon at work upon. But the Doctor never threw a glance beyond me, neither at the scrod that Elizabeth's lover had brought him in the last boat-load before the storm, and that in consequence she had browned like a segment of cocoa-nut, nor at the snowy biscuit, nor the baked russets dripping with their jelly like some Oriental conserve.

"Tell Martin to put old Chestnut in, Elizabeth," said he, getting down his storm-cloak.

"The water 's over the road," said the stranger, "high as any carriagefloor; wind would upset a buggy too. Better go in the saddle, sir." And in five minutes the Doctor and his companion were battling their way down the overflowed road to the beach.

All my life has not yet made me indifferent to the trouble of a doctor's wife. So that night I sent the scrod to the kitchen in disgrace; and had a cup of green tea, because I knew it would have been forbidden me had he been at home. Then a fit of compunction seized me that my bad heart would have kept succor away from such a strait, and I felt a new reverence for the unselfish soul that was carrying life itself, perhaps, to one as dear to another as he was to me; and I had a little combat with the feeling, because I was angry with him for going; and just then the door opened, and the carrier threw in the evening paper.

He was earlier than common, because the dark had fallen so soon, and the storm prevented his stopping to whip his top or make his fortune in marbles on the way. I took it as I crossed the entry, and after darkening the pane,

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There is one charm about an evening paper that surpasses all the rest,in whatever remote seclusion you may have shut yourself, this silent sheet puts you instantly into communication with all the great revolving world, and innocent and secure in your cosey snuggery you hobnob with kings or criminals, and watch the making or the wrecking of states as the gods do on their clouds. Perhaps it was with some such feeling that I unfolded the paper that night. There was a great trial going on, the report of which had deeply interested me, for I had heard something of the personages from the Doctor, who knew them well; and of course it would be continued to-night.

Many a time had the Doctor told me laughingly of little Joey Hazard and her two lovers, Joey Hazard, who lived in Netherby, the town across the bay where he was sometimes called, -a shy but saucy bit of maidenhood some twenty summers old. The Doctor had been so impressed with her charming coquetries, and the white and pink of her pretty face, that he had rendered her personality vividly enough to make me sure I should know Joey Hazard if I met her in the Sahara, — though nothing could have been more remote than that sandy region from the town where Joey lived, and from all the freshness, breeziness, and seaboard stir attending it. Joey's house was on a hill commanding the harbor and overlooking the busy market-place; and when the Doctor had first met her, she was coming down this hill, wrapped in an extinguisher of a great black cloak and hood, and the impatient wind had caught a corner of the sombre garment, and was twisting it round her, and had fairly blown the hood back upon her shoulders. Accomplishing this, the wind had even made so bold as to seize the bright hair swept back over the temples, and,

loosening a lock, had measured out its curling length, and was doing his best to make off with the prize, while Joey, with her head half turned upon one side, as if she were giving him her cheek to kiss with its shifting snows and roses, cast a glance askance at the grave old stranger struggling up the hill, and went on battling her way down. But it was to Joey's house that the Doctor's steps were bent, for it was to her mother, an old townswoman, that he had been summoned; he was late, and perhaps he had been misled, and so Joey had been sent after him; and now, having passed him, she put the wind to sudden confusion by turning about and following the stranger,.overtaking him, and walking along demurely almost by his side, not daring to speak, but looking sidelong a dozen times a minute.

"So, my pretty maid," said the Doctor, taking breath; "can you tell me where I may find the Widow Hazard's house?"

Joey bridled at the address, - she had an indistinct idea that to be called a pretty maid was correlative to being called a pretty servant-girl, — but after one challenging glance she thought fit to reply, not by surrendering the citadel of an answer, but by throwing out the picket of an inquiry. "Are you the Doctor?"

"Yes," was the reply. looking for me?" "Yes."

"Are you

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