“Oons, sir, ’tis a matter of life and death!” said the man, as he saluted the parson with becoming respect, and then pointed quickly back in the direction of the sea, which could be seen faintly glistening in the murky light of a clouded moon. “I’m from the revenue cutter in the offing yonder, where one of my mates lies with a bullet in’s back, sent there by one of those rascally smugglers in a fray we’ve had with them but now. I’ve been in the village for help, but they say there’s no doctor here but yourself. So I beg your honor’ll come with me, and do what you can for him. And could you tell me of a woman that would watch by him? For we’ve all got our hands full, and he’ll be wandering from his wits ere morning.” The parson, without a moment’s delay, had begun, by the help of his daughter, to get into a rough brown riding-coat that hung from a nail on the whitewashed wall. “Why, there you have me out,” said he, as he buttoned himself up to the chin, and put a round, broad-brimmed black hat, with a bow and a twisted band of black cloth, tightly on to his somewhat rusty, grizzled bob-wig. “For there’s none in these parts to nurse the sick as well as my daughter Joan.” “And sure I’m ready to go, father!” cried the girl, who, with the nimbleness of a fawn, had darted back into the parlor and brought out her father’s case of surgical instruments, as well as a diminutive portable chest, containing such drugs and medicines as were in use at the time. “I’ll have on my hood in a tick of the clock.” And by the time these words were uttered she had flown up the steep, narrow staircase and disappeared round the bend at the top. The sailor, who had stepped inside the porch, out of the wind and a drizzling rain which had now begun to fall, was full of admiration and astonishment. “Oons, sir, but ’twill be rough work for the young mistress!” said he. “The water’s washing over the boat yonder, and we shan’t be able to push off without getting wet up to the waist.” “The lass is used to rough weather,” said Parson Langney, proudly. “She’ll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough peasant’s cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the stairs. Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on the other, started for the shore. The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage stood. A very few minutes’ sharp walking brought them all to a lower level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the edge of the crumbling cliffs.