IN WHICH MISS SULLIVAN FINDS MANY REASONS FOR DEPARTURE Uncle Jake and his giant progeny made light of their burden, all the half-mile to old Dempster’s. They were confident, feeling their own vigorous blood beating healthily from end to end of their great bodies, that no man, not dead, could die. In their experience as farmers and fishermen, they had seen much more dangerous hurts recovered from than any of the stranger’s. “He’s pretty well bunged up an’ has swallered an almighty lot o’ salt water; but that’ll do him good an’ cure the bruises. Why, I shouldn’t wonder,” continued Uncle Jake, gradually talking himself into positiveness, “ef he was jumpin’ ’round by day after to-morrer, as spry as a two-year-old. He ain’t a sailor. I kind er guess he was a passenger aboard some ’long-shore craft. That wrecked stuff looked like it belonged to some Down East schooner. I hope it warn’t Bill Dempster’s. Now, Mirandy, you take good keer o’ this here chap an’ p’r’aps he’ll be a-buckin’ up to yer, when he’s so’s to be ’round.” Miranda and Miss Sullivan smiled. Uncle Jake was evidently a little more concerned than he pretended, and chatted to keep up their spirits. Once or twice when the bearers paused to shift hands or rest a moment, their burden seemed to make a futile attempt toward life. There was a tremor of eyelid and lip--perhaps a slight unclosing of the eye. Still, if there was any change, deathliness soon came again. Miss Sullivan and Miranda ran on to make preparations. “I think,” said the latter, “that we’d better put him in your room, if you still mean to go, as you decided yesterday.” “I must go,” replied the other, with a quick intaking of the breath, “unless I can be of some service to this gentleman.” Was it her fine instinct that had recognised the gentleman? “I don’t see what you can do more than mother and I will--except that you have kinder, pleasanter ways,” Miranda assured her. “P’r’aps this man will turn out to be a sailor ’long shore, after all, and we’ll know how to nuss him better than you would.” “Well,” said Miss Sullivan, “we shall see;” but it was evident that in her heart she was quite certain he was no sailor. Mrs. Dempster flurried about and had everything ready in the invalid’s room by the time Uncle Jake arrived. The three men carried their burden into his hospital, while the women waited anxiously for a report. Life or Death? Old Dempster and Dan’l at this moment returned from catching and feeding White Socks and preparing the buggy for Miss Sullivan’s journey. While they were hearing the history of the rescue, Uncle Jake came out with a cheerful look. “He ain’t no sailor,” he announced. “Here’s his pocket-book with three hundred an’ fifty dollars in gold. You just take that, old woman, and don’t let Dan’l use any on ’em for buttons to his new swaller-tail. Wal, Miss Sullivan, I guess your man’ll git well. He’s breathin’ reg’lar, but don’t seem to know nothin’ yit.”