To this spot it was, just as the "setting sun's pathetic light" had been succeeded by the grey twilight of the evening, that we bore the body of our unfortunate companion. The door was closed, but Grace being accustomed to nocturnal visitors, speedily answered the first summons and presented herself. She was evidently of immense age, being nearly bowed double, and her figure, with her silvery hair, confined by a blue checked cotton handkerchief, and palsied hand, as tremblingly she rested upon her staff and eyed the group, would have made a subject worthy of the pencil of a Landseer. She was wrapped in an old red cloak, with a large hood, and in her ears she wore a pair of long gold-dropped earrings, similar to what one sees among the Norman peasantry--the gift, as I afterwards learned, of a drowned lover. After scrutinising us for a second or two, during which time a large black cat kept walking to and fro, purring and rubbing itself against her, she held back the door and beckoned us to enter. The little place was cleanly swept up, and a faggot and some dry brushwood, which she had just lighted for the purpose of boiling her kettle, threw a gleam of light over the apartment, alike her bedchamber, parlour, and kitchen. Her curtainless bed at the side, covered with a coarse brown counterpane, was speedily prepared for our friend, into which being laid, our new acquaintances were dispatched in search of doctors, while the boatman and myself, under the direction of old Grace, applied ourselves to procuring such restoratives as her humble dwelling afforded. "Let Grace alone," said the younger of the boatmen, seeing my affliction at the lamentable catastrophe, "if there be but a spark of life in the gentleman, she'll bring him round--many's the drowning man--aye, and wounded one, too--that's been brought in here during the stormy nights, and after fights with the coast-guard--that she's recovered."