'I may come again, mayn't I, Ma'am, and hear how she gets on? I found her, you see,' said Bill apologetically.

'Surely you may come; come in two hours time,' answered the mistress; and so Bill went away, and left her to her work of chafing and warming and bathing the poor little body, which had drifted about on the gentle merciless sea until it was chilled and starved almost to death. Not quite to death, for in time the eyes opened a very little way and a shiver passed through the limbs. By this time the children had gone home, marshalled away in good order by the eldest scholar, so there was no one to hear Mrs. Lester's sob of joy as those black eyes opened and opened wider, and the little figure began to turn and move. She wrapped it in flannel, and took it on to her knee, and put hot brandy and water between the blue lips.

When Bill came again, the little lady he had saved was sleeping soundly in her blanket in a bed made up in the full warmth and glow of Mrs. Lester's bright fire, (for it was only spring as yet, and nights were chill,) and the school-mistress was watching her over her twinkling knitting-pins. Bill looked at the little sleeper with a puzzled face still, scratched his head, repeated how he had found her down among the tangle, said 'Thank you, Ma'am,' quite humbly, and went away, scraping a leg and pulling his hair. He was very different to-day from the wild Black Bill who was the terror of all quiet souls in the village.

The poor little half-drowned creature lay for a full week in Mrs. Lester's warm and cleanly room, sleeping continually. Meanwhile, some little garments were begged for her, and others were made against the time when she should be able to wear them. One day, Bill brought a little parcel of money to the school-mistress.

'Look ye, Mrs. Lester, Ma'am,' he said; 'I had a good take of fish yesterday, and I can spare this much for the little lass. She'll be wanting some rubbish of clothes or so, I reckon.'

'You are very kind,' said Mrs. Lester.

'No, it's not kind exactly,' answered Bill, rubbing his hand across his mouth because words did not come readily to him. 'I'd like to have her down at my place,' he added, looking in his puzzled way at the little sleeping face.

The school-mistress turned her eyes upon him doubtfully. She thought that Bill's 'place' was by no means fit for a little girl to live in.

'She is better with a woman while she is so ill,' she answered, ‘and the parson is seeking her friends.'

CHAPTER II.

Ar last the little form, which had hitherto lain so still, began to stir and turn in the soft bed, and the eyes opened large with wonder at all the strange new things which they were now able to notice for the first time.

The child sat up and spoke to the eldest scholar, who was watching her, some words which she could not understand. She was frightened, and ran to call Mrs. Lester, who came. The child spoke to her also, and seemed to be eagerly asking questions; but the mistress could understand her no better than the pupil. 'Poor little soul!' she said; 'she comes from a foreign land. Never mind, Mr. Dykes will talk to her, he knows so many foreign tongues.' Mr. Dykes was the clergyman.

It was clear, however, that the forlorn little stranger was tired of bed, so Mrs. Lester lifted her up in her arms, and would have wrapped her in a shawl and carried her so into the school-room. But the small lady wanted to be nicely dressed; she showed it by the way in which she stroked down her rough hair, and the distress with which she regarded her poor little unwashed hands. So kind Mrs. Lester called for the clothes which had been made, and washed the child, and brushed her soft hair, letting it fall, all straight and black and silky as it was, on her shoulders, and dressed her nicely in the fresh calico, and warm flannel, and neat purple print, which Bill's little packet of money had helped to buy, and the scholars had helped to sew.

The child stood quietly to be dressed, but from time to time she asked some question in the strange language, at which Mrs. Lester could only shake her head, or at least, kiss the poor little lips, which might as well have been dumb for all the use their speech was to the child or to those about her. Then she was wrapped in Mrs. Lester's best Scotch shawl, and carried (for she was weak as yet) into the school. It was the afternoon; the children had their thread and thimbles ready to begin to sew while Mrs. Lester should tell them a story, That was the afternoon lesson. But the children were more eager for a sight of the stranger than even for a new story; their eyes and mouths grew very round with surprise as they watched her where she sat on the mistress's knee; her face was so small and brown and odd, her eyes were so large and dark, her little brown hands were so thin. She was not like them; they were shy before her. She looked at each of them, one after the other, and each child on whom those black eyes rested, fidgeted and felt uneasy. She was seeking for a face she knew, and when she found none, she watched the door throughout the lesson, of which she understood not one word.

When all the children were gone away, Mrs. Lester carried the child into the garden, and set her in a little chair placed where the warm spring sun could shine upon her, but the deep porch sheltered her from the keen spring air. The whole place was sweet with violets and ladslove, and musical with the distant tinkle of children's laughter, and a gentle under-lying bass from the sea flowing upon the beach. The child did not notice the beautiful things around her; she looked wistfully at the kind school-mistress, and a great tear rolled down her cheek.

'Poor child, she misses her mother,' said Mrs. Lester to herself. It was true; and that mother lay dead far beneath the sea which was murmuring so musically.

Presently, Bill came skulking up the road, as if he were ashamed to come. He stopped outside, and stood watching the little girl through a thin place in the hedge. 'Come in,' called Mrs. Lester; and he came in shyly, for the cleanliness of the school-house always seemed rather awful to him-scarcely less awful indeed than the Rector's grave face when Bill met him. As he came up the garden path, the child sprang to her feet, stretched out her thin brown arms, cried, ‘O caro Giacopo!' and fled to him. He took her up, and she kissed him.

'She mistakes you for someone she knows,' said Mrs. Lester. That was true, for when the child looked again in his face, her joyful countenance fell, and she struggled to be set down. When let go, she ran to Mrs. Lester and hid behind her gown. The child seemed frightened of him, and something in the manner of her shyness made him somehow feel how rough and dirty he was, and that his great boots, which had been soaked through and through with mud and sea-water until they had lost all shine and almost all shape, were soiling that prim, spotless pathway of warm red tiling. He stood awkwardly still, pulling at a twig which he was chewing.

'I'd like to have her down to my place, now she's hearty again,' he said in a little while, looking at the straight dark hair, like silk, which was all he could see of the little one's head. 'I'd send her to you, Mrs. Lester, Ma'am, for the schooling; I'd pay the two-pence regular,' he added, seeing that the mistress looked doubtful.

'I'm not afraid but you'd do that, Bill,' she answered; but is your house fit for a girl to live in, think you?'

Why not?' he asked, scowling, and looking like Black Bill again. 'Why not my house as well as any man's?'

"What if you were to bring your wicked friends there to drink with you? would it be fit for her then?'

He was silent a few moments, then said sulkily, 'Maybe I wouldn't bring them where she was.'

'Well, the matter will be decided for us if Mr. Dykes finds her friends, as he most likely will,' said Mrs. Lester.

But Mr. Dykes did not find her friends, although he found out that she had sailed from Italy in a ship called the Buonaventura, which means The Good Fortune, but which had met with ill fortune instead. For the poor vessel had gone down not far from land, and this little child, danced into shore upon the merry cruel waves, was the only creature of all that ship's company which the sea had spared. No one claimed her in Italy or in England, so she was left to the mercy of the villagers; and as Bill seemed still to wish for her, 'because he had found her, and so she was his in a sort of way,' he said, it came to pass that she was sent at last to live in his rough home. For kind Mrs. Lester thought: 'I can still see after the poor child's welfare, and she may be the means of bringing that terrible man to a better life, poor lost soul! If he harms the child, I will take her back, and she shall share what little I possess, let Black Bill say what he please.'

CHAPTER III.

THE real name of that village was Brentholm Meadow-sweet, because in the season the delicate creamy feathers of the meadow-sweet drenched the whole place in their strong delicious odour. But the people found that name far too long for common use, so the village was generally called Holm, or Brentholm at the most. A ridge of uneven yellow cliffs ran along by the sea, and up these cliffs climbed the little Brentholm houses, white, with red roofs, odd and picturesque, perched in all sorts of funny out-of-the-way places, on ground so steep that the roof often touched the soil at the back of the building. The houses, from a little distance, looked rather like houses from a box of toys than actual human habitations. Then there were cosy cottages hidden away in warm nooks behind the cliffs; and daring little fishermen's huts, which ran down to meet the devouring sea, and would have been swallowed up by it long ago had not a hand which is stronger than nature set bounds to the

ocean.

So Brentholm was a large village. It did not stand upon the open sea, but on a long creek which ran up into the land-a tongue of water licking the soft lips of two peaceful green shores. Brentholm stood near the mouth of this gulflet, here ten miles across, not so wide but what the woods on the opposite bank showed thick and green. A strip of land ran out into the sea below the cliffs, a bit of pasture shaped like a leaf, and indeed from the heights it looked very much like a leaf of green enamel encrusted with pearls. The pearls were grave-stones. For the dead of Brentholm lay where the waves could murmur a soft continuous dirge over them, and the village church stood where that tiny promontory sprang from the mainland.

Black Bill's cottage, his 'place,' as he called it, was a tumble-down building behind the other Brentholm houses, and apart from them. A narrow, deep-rutted lane led to it; long tangled sprays of briar and wild rose and clematis threw themselves across the path, as if they wished to join hands with their neighbours on the other side and close the lane to wayfarers. Bill's garden, now no garden, but a mass of weeds, ran to the edge of a steep cliff, at whose foot the sea dashed and roared; for here the shore curved, and a dark creek came up into the land; its sides looked so steep that you would have said no one could venture up or down them, yet Jem the sexton and his old friends, when they spoke of Bill, would shake their white old polls in a meaning way, and say 'there was more in Lubber's Creek than the gaugers knew of.' They meant, that half way down the steep rock below Bill's garden, was a dark hole of a cave, and that in this hole Black Bill, who was more than suspected of smuggling, hid his barrels of spirits and cases of contraband tea. The cottage itself was in a sad state; the walls were bulging out, the thatch

was falling in, there were holes in the floor and bad places on the walls; the one lower window was half stuffed up with rags and straw in place of glass, and the two windows above-stairs, close under the over-hanging thatch, looked like blind owls' eyes when they peep from beneath their shaggy eyebrows. When Mrs. Lester brought the child to this dreary place, because no one had owned the poor little thing, she almost cried to think of leaving her there. Yet there was no help for it; Bill wished for the child, and he had found her, and so he had a better right to her than anyone else had. He stood leaning awkwardly against the doorpost of his cottage, chewing the end of his neckerchief; he looked very shy and uncomfortable when Mrs. Lester came up over the ragged broken path; he was doing a kind action in taking the little girl to his home, and it seemed so unnatural to him to be doing a thing which was not foolish or bad, that he grew red and dumb under the strange feeling. The child, too, was 'such a lady,' as Mrs. Lester said, and the foreign tongue which she spoke formed so impassable a barrier to Bill, who did not know even his own language over well, that he felt half afraid of her, and did not even dare to kiss her when the school-mistress said, 'Well, Bill, I have brought her, you see.' He only put his hand behind him on to the table before the window, where lay a big juicy orange, which he had bought to give to his small visitor as a welcome and a peace offering. He held the orange towards her, and she took it with a pretty smile and the word 'Grazie,' which in the Italian tongue means 'Thanks.' She looked at him, meanwhile, with her deep sad eyes, until Bill began dimly to fancy that he had found a little fairy, countless ages old yet always young, instead of a real human child of common flesh and blood. Fairies were still told of in that part; who could tell what this odd dark little thing might be? Then Bill pointed with his thumb up a steep set of ladder-steps which led to the second storey.

'Her room's up yonder,' he said; and the women went climbing up the ladder. A sailor's wife had cleaned the floor of the little chamber; Bill had paid her sixpence to do it, and he had also bought a little bed and a stool, and even a blue and white jug and bason, at a shop where seamen bought and sold second-hand articles. The jug and bason were set out on an old box; Bill was proud of them, and thought them great luxuries, for he always washed at the pump, when, indeed, he washed at all, which was not too often. He had brought them up the night before, one under each arm; his face was sulky as he came up the street, for all his comrades had laughed at him, and asked if he was going to set up for a gentleman, and had called him Lord Rags, which made them all laugh again. He had thought then, of setting down the jug and bason, and having a fight with all the men there before he carried the crockery home; but remembering that in the scuffle it would get broken or stolen away, and that it had cost eight good pennies, he bore all the laughter, and was so much the more proud of his finery because he had endured something for its sake.