It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself, shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long Point Island. Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor. Struck by the account, Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the shanty of Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience. She might have passed for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment. "Well, I don't know," she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for the first time,--"I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more'n I'd do again." Before Captain Dorr left, he took the measure of her own and her children's feet, and on his return to Buffalo sent her a box containing shoes, stockings, and such other comfortable articles of clothing as they most needed. He published a brief account of his visit to the heroine of Long Point, which attracted the attention of some members of the Provincial Parliament, and through their exertions a grant of one hundred acres of land, on the Canada shore, near Port Rowan, was made to her. Soon after she was invited to Buffalo, where she naturally excited much interest. A generous contribution of one thousand dollars, to stock her farm, was made by the merchants, ship-owners and masters of the city, and she returned to her family a grateful and, in her own view, a rich woman. When the story of her adventure reached New York, the Life-Saving Benevolent Association sent her a gold medal with an appropriate inscription, and a request that she would send back a receipt in her own name. As she did not know how to write, Captain Dorr hit upon the expedient of having her photograph taken with the medal in her hand, and sent that in lieu of her autograph.