I've always thought there was something real noble between Dan and me then. There was I,--well, I don't mind telling you. And he,--yes, I'm sure he loved me perfectly,--you mustn't be startled, I'll tell you how it was,--and always had, only maybe he hadn't known it; but it was deep down in his heart just the same, and by-and-by it stirred. There we were, both of us thoroughly conscious, yet neither of us expressing it by a word, and trying not to by a look,--both of us content to wait for the next life, when we could belong to one another. In those days I contrived to have it always pleasure enough for me just to know that Dan was in the room; and though that wasn't often, I never grudged Faith her right in him, perhaps because I knew she didn't care anything about it. You see, this is how it was. When Dan was a lad of sixteen, and took care of his mother, a ship went to pieces down there on the island. It was one of the worst storms that ever whistled, and though crowds were on the shore, it was impossible to reach her. They could see the poor wretches hanging in the rigging, and dropping one by one, and they could only stay and sicken, for the surf stove the boats, and they didn't know then how to send out ropes on rockets or on cannon-balls, and so the night fell, and the people wrung their hands and left the sea to its prey, and felt as if blue sky could never come again. And with the bright, keen morning not a vestige of the ship, but here a spar and there a door, and on the side of a sand-hill a great dog watching over a little child that he'd kept warm all night. Dan, he'd got up at turn of tide, and walked down,--the sea running over the road knee-deep,--for there was too much swell for boats; and when day broke, he found the little girl, and carried her up to town. He didn't take her home, for he saw that what clothes she had were the very finest,--made as delicately,--with seams like the hair-strokes on that heart's-ease there; and he concluded that he couldn't bring her up as she ought to be. So he took her round to the rich men, and represented that she was the child of a lady, and that a poor fellow like himself--for Dan was older than his years, you see--couldn't do her justice: she was a slight little thing, and needed dainty training and fancy food, maybe a matter of seven years old, and she spoke some foreign language, and perhaps she didn't speak it plain, for nobody knew what it was. However, everybody was very much interested, and everybody was willing to give and to help, but nobody wanted to take her, and the upshot of it was that Dan refused all their offers and took her himself. His mother'd been in to our house all the afternoon before, and she'd kept taking her pipe out of her mouth,--she had the asthma, and smoked,--and kept sighing. "This storm's going to bring me something," says she, in a mighty miserable tone. "I'm sure of it!" "No harm, I hope, Miss Devereux," said mother.