“Don't ye, don't ye, my Lady; hush, hush!” cried the weeping Mary. “It was only natural that I should take to a sweet innocent creature cast at our very door by the raging sea. I often dream of that storm o' nights, madam, even now; of the thunder, and the lightning, and the rain; and of the flashes that were not lightning, but signals for help--that, alas! we could not give--from the poor doomed ship. And how father and the other fishermen, and many of the visitors themselves--and among them poor Sir Robert--all crowded down to the Cove, for they could not get nearer to the shore because of the waves; and I was with them, sheltering myself in the brushwood as well as I could, and peering through the branches to see the great white waves lit up for an instant, and then the darkness shutting all things out except the roaring of the storm. I mind it just as though it were but yesterday; and ah! my Lady, shall I ever forget when that one great wave dashed up into the very Cove itself, wetting us all to the skin, and knocking down young Jack West, whom it almost carried back with it in its return, and then the Great Black Spar, which it did carry back, with something white a-clinging to it; when my father cried out: 'O my God, a woman!' and all our hearts seemed stricken with a sudden shoot of pain. Lord! how I cried, for my part, to think that a poor creature should he tossing in that dreadful foam; and when I heard good Sir Robert's voice, clear and loud as a bugle: 'One hundred pounds to the man who brings her ashore, dead or alive!' I do believe I could have run out and kissed him. Ah, my Lady, what a noble gentleman he was; for though he could not have known how dear you were to be to him--you might have been an old woman, for all he could see--how he worked and strove to save you; not by his money alone, for no mère gain would have tempted men to do what was done that night, but by risking life and limb. They made a double chain, holding one another's hands, for there was no time to spare for ropes, and went down almost among the breakers, where you were: my father and Sir Robert were the two first men, God bless them!” Here Mistress Forest paused, interrupted by incipient hysterics, and my Lady herself cried like a child, but not in agony; her tears were tribute to the memory of a gallant deed. “I mind my father had a black shoulder--a place you could not cover with both your hands--all along of the spar being driven up against him, but they carried it up with you upon it safe into the Cove, and then there was a great cry for us women to come down and help. Ah, how beautiful you looked, my Lady, though we thought you dead, white, and cold, and wet, with your long black hair dripping like sea-weed, and your tender limbs all bruised and bleeding. It must have been a kind band as tied you to the plank, for between your dainty waist and the rough rope there was bound a sailor's jacket.”