CHAPTER I.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 22, 21 September 1883, Page 7

CHAPTER I.

The island of Orra lies about seven or eight miles from the Scotch coast, and has a very poor fishing population of less tban five hundred souls. It boasts a small kirk, but is only occasionally visited by a clergyman. The scattered groups of houses which cluster at intervals about the greenest and least rocky portions of the isle are inhabited by fisherman and their families. The only large dwelling is a strong, wide, low-roofed, house known a 9 the Lodge, and Various have been the occupants of this house since the day it was bailt— a day about midway in the last century. For what; purpose it was originally erected no one exactly knows. A landlord of the soil once used It for summer quarters ; a clergyman had occupied it till starved out by lack of money and society. It had been the abode of r speculating trader who thought to make money by the fishing, and who, after experience of a few Btormy winters, made up his mind that fortune was not to be wooed among the breakers that thunder round Orra. At the lime this story opens, the occupants of the Lodge were a young doctor and his widowed mother, whom an unkind stroke of fate had driven to take shelter in the bare and unprosperous island. Whether Dr. Kenneth Craig would find it possible to live upon fishing and small fees for a few years, while considering the difficult question of how to push his way into wider fields of action, did, at the opening of this story, yet remain to be proved. He had been twelve months in Orra, and the second dreary winter was wearing to a close, and if he had discovered that the inhabitants were healthy, having little need of his services, it gave him pleasure to reflect that he had been able to restore life to some few half-drowned and shipwrecked fellow-creatures who had been washed ashore on the island duung the bygone months of his voluntary captivity there. Bat even had practice been good and fees large, young Dr. Craig had owned to himself that a life on Orra could aot be found desirable. Cut off from society with men of his own class, he felt the blood stagnating n his veins ; nothing ever happened to disturb the monotony of existence, except some sad event brought about by the fury-fits of the surrounding and imprisoning sea. On a certain tempestuous J'Sp.V, wnile the waves roaied round the cliffs, and the burrcane bullied ab the low, small windows set in the deep walls of the Lodge, Kenneth Craig sighed as he tossed upon his pillow and longed to turn ms back upon the dreariness of Orra for evermore. Towards morning there was a pause in the rage of the storm, and a blood-red sunrise, glaring through torn clouds, lit up the island of Orra with a magical beauty. As a dark-ha'rcd girl was hurrying through the glory, along one of the loneliness parts of the place, and crossing some rocks, and descending into a creek below them, she was surprised to see two figures at a little distance, one lying prone on the sand, like a lifeless waif from the ocean, the other that of a man bending over it. One of the figures the girl recognized even from a distance, and began running like a deer till Bhe Btood by his side. "A- thought a was the first out mysel' this mornin'," she said. ' This is a sair sight you've met wi', Duncan I " "Ay!"Baid Duncan, raising a manly face, the grave lines of which relaxed into a smile as he looked from the apparently dead woman at his feet to the living «ne at bis side. " I canna be rght sure she's dead, Mary. I wish to heaven we had her safe at the Lodge, and in the doctor's hands." •> v." Tak her in your arms > Duncan, an' gang off across the heather wi her. Doctor '11 be about airly, as be always is after a storm." " I^s but a chance," said Duncan, " but we maun do all we can for her. And lifting her in his arms as if ahe had been a baby, he strode off over the heath-covered wilds, Mary following him. Mary was right iv thinking that the doctor would be out early ; for, coming within a few hundred yards of the Lodge, they, saw him battling across the heather with a stick in his hand, holding on his hat, at which the wind was making angry snatches. A few strides brought him to Duncan's side, and a few words and glances told the story of the womnn in his arms. Then all three hurried with her- to v *\ ouse ' An elderly lady in black, with silver hair, met them a,, the door ; the poor waif from the sea was laid on an old cavernous sofa in the parlor, and, while the doctor went for restoratives, Mary and Mrs. Craig disencumbered the insensible girl of her wet and clinging raiment, wrapped her in warm garments of flannel, and swathed her in hot blankets. Mrs. Craig's white, soft hands shook with agitat'on as she performed her task, and swept back the long, thick masses of golden hair which wound about the drowned creature's head and over her eyes and around her throat. Well for her chances of life that they had not been bound across her mouth 1 " A weel," said Mary, as she chafed the girl's tender skin, " but it's * lovely face—a Bair sight. Mistress, dinna greet : she is na dead. Dr. Kenneth applied his restoratives, and after an hour of unceasing effort the patient gasped and rolled her head. The doctor drew a long breath of relief. Never had he striven so hard for a fellow-creature's life. The beautiful, pinched face, piteous in its helplessness had already impressed his imagination, and he had tnrown all his force into the hand-to-hand struggle with death, which might possibly result in the reopening of those white-lidded eves, the S Jlf Uedandpur P led h i> s - As the S irl breathed, Mrs. cheeks y ' big tearß roUed down Mary ' s blo °ming MW ? 070 7* ba **?°P«>ing had been made, the young life fought its iK ShllS Slowl; ? a ,? d *"Pen*e]y,'oul of the citadel ofdeath! In a few hours the purple lips had become red, and the eyelids Lad

unclosed and shown a pair of dark grey eyes ; but utter weakness soon closed them again, and the patient slept. Late in the afternoon the doctor had left her still sleeping, and had gone out to assure himself that his assistance was not needed elsewhere, that no other balf drowned creature was perishing in 6ome lonely spot for lack of help because he, the doctor, was all absorbed by an overwhelming zeal for the welfare of one woman. Knowing that danger was over, he had sent his mother to rest a little in her own room, and left Mary, whom he knew he could trust, to watch by the patient's side. The room was half-darkened, and Mary, who had been up all night, had begun to doza in her chair, when a slight sound aroused her. Starting, she saw the patient sitting upright on her couch, gazing around her. " Dinna be frightened," said Mary, encouragingly. " Weel I ken 'tis a strange place to ye ; but you've got among friends. Doctor '11 be here in a minute or two." '• Who are* you ? " asked the patient, fixing her eyes on her nodding and smiling nurse. " I'm Mary ; although you dinna ken me, dearie." " Mary — where are my jewels ? " " Deed, an' we ha' seen na jewels about ye but your eyas," said Mary, " an' glad we were to see them, ye had kept them so long locked up." The patient gave her a troubled look. " Mary," she .said, " I have not been asleep for the last half hour," glancing at a large-faced old clock, that stood in a corner. "I have been thinking and remembering it all. I know I have been wrecked, and I believe I have got among kind people. But I am wondering what has become of the jewels." " It's like tha' all went down," said Mary, gravely. " Luggage goes straight to the bottom. There's more nor you has lost their goods last night ; and there's not a many has saved their lives." " I know that, Mary, and I deserve your rebuke, perhaps ; but my jewels were not in my trunks. They were all on my body, clasped and fastened tight ; and the clasps were so good sometimes I could hardly unfasten them. Some of them ought to have been upon me still." " Weel, Weel ! " said Mary. " what sort o' jewels were they ? " " Such as you never saw, Mary ; they were all my fortune in the world." "There now, lie down, you're tirin' yoursel 1 ," said Mary ;" ye can tr.ll the mistress and the doctor about it a. Mary is too ignorant to ken* what you mean." The patient did as she was bidden, and lay down quietly on her pillow ; but her eyes remained wide open, aud fixed themselves now here now there, taking in the details of the room. The next morning Priscilla Emerson (so she called herself) was dressed in garments hastily contrived for her by Mrs. Craig and Mary. Her gown was blue and white calico, the only material at hand, but Mrs. Craig thought that in all her long experince of other scenes than these she had never beheld a more charming woman than the shipwrecked girl in her simple attire. She was carried into the shabby but homely drawing-room of the Lodge and placed in a huge arm-chair near a blazing peat fire. The month was March and keenly cold, aud the storm still raged around the island. The cliffs beyond the windows were hidden in a mist of foam from the wrath of the breakers, and the continuous rolling thunder of the sea filled the ears, forming a sinister bass to the shrieking trebles of the wind. Priscilla listened and shuddered ; and then smiled as she saw the dear old lady with the silver hair, looking across the hearth at her comfortably. Mrs. Craig was indeed anxious to know if the guest who had come so strangely to her fireside was mourning the loss of some dear ones swallowed up in the deep waters, from which she herself had been snatched. But with true tact she forebore to question. "I am' giving you a great deal of trouble."said Priscilla. " My dearl if you only knew what a boon it is for a lonely old woman like me, in a place like this, to see you there. lam only fearing—" " That I have lost some one I love. Well, I did like very well the poor lady who was coming to Europe with me as cliaperon. But I knew her so little she had hardly yet become a friend. She is gone, of course. I think her life had not been happy; I hope she is happier now. As for me, my life has been passed at school. I am an orphan, without a relation in the world." " Poor child!" " Yes ; I shall be poor enough, now that my jewels are lost." " Your jewels 1 " <; Yes ; may I tell you my little story ? " " I shall hear it willingly mv dear." "My paients died when I was a small child, and my uncle, who was very wealthy, put me at once to school. I seldom saw him ;he never would have me in the holidays, but he came to visit me occasionally ; and he paid my bills. I received a good education, and I was not unhappy. Six months ago he died, and left me a handsome inheritance. His will was a strange one. I was to go to Paris, and there to turn into money the wonderful quantity of jewels which he bequeathed me. All my fortune, in fact, reached me in the form of those jewels, which, two months ago, were handed to me by my unole's lawyer. They were kept in a large casket, or small chest ( or iron. The lawyer told me that it was a craze of my uncle's to distrust all banks, shares and investments of- every kind. Gold, jewels, anything of intrinsic value which he could hold in his hand, alone conveyed to him the idea of wealth. In his will he permitted me to turn the jewels into money, that I might live ; but he thought he was providing for my safty when he insisted that I should convey my fortune to England or to Paris in the form in which he had left it to me. " ' " You amaze me," said Mrs. Craig ; " I have heard of many strange whims of wealthy men, but none more strange than this. " Here Dr. Craig entered the room, and his honest face beamed with satisfaction as he saw his mother and their guest sitting tocether in friendly conversation. {To be Continued.)