I was content to lie there while I fancied I felt soft hands press mine, warm tears baptize my face, and gentle touches extricate the gasping Rover from my drowning gripe on his hair; but after he was removed, I seemed to be more roughly handled by less tender fingers, and opened my eyes to find the zealous Mr. Hayes kneeling by my side, and, under his fair mistress's orders of course, doing his duty toward my resuscitation, while at a safe distance stood Dora, her dripping favorite sneezing and floundering in her arms, and her happy face beaming rosier and fairer than ever, by contrast with her soiled and bedraggled garments, as she pressed the precious rescued treasure to her heart, and received her lover's congratulations on its restoration, with only an occasional furtive glance at me, as I lay slowly coming back to life under his active treatment. So the tears, the pallor, the heroism, the daring rescue, were for the sake of that worthless dog. I was saved incidentally with her interesting favorite, as I might have drowned in his cause, and no questions asked, and having accomplished my high mission, and preserved the stupid brute, lay untended and uncared-for on the sand, dependent on the kind offices of my successful rival! The blood rushed back to my heart, the fiery strength to my nerves, as I slowly drank in the bitterness of this cup. 'Your cousin's better, Miss Dora,' said the benignant Hayes. 'Aren't you going to thank him?' She moved nearer in instinctive obedience to him, bashful, tearful, trembling, confused, but radiant and lovely as I had never seen her, and lifting her timid eyes to his, as it seemed for further instructions, with a gentle deprecating grace, while she carefully averted them from me. I could bear it no longer, and with an energetic oath sprang up, knocking the astonished Tom back into my place, and extorting a little cry of surprise from Miss Dora, as I strode away toward the village, determined to shake its dust from my feet, and never again look upon the faces of the precious couple I had left. I rushed through my aunt's kitchen like a whirlwind, on my way, and bade her good-by. 'Good-by, Georgy? what does the boy mean?' said she. She was phlegmatic and slow. 'I mean I shall never see you again, aunty. God bless you, I'm going away.' 'Hoity-toity, nonsense!' said she; 'some folly of yours and Dora's; never mind her, a silly girl! you'll be my own boy yet, my dear; but you're dripping wet, George; you have been in the water, you'll take cold, child; here swallow this,' and mingling spirituous with spiritual comfort, the good old lady poured a fiery glass of brandy down my throat, and I poured out my sorrowful story into her motherly ear, as I had done when an orphan boy, and all my life since, waxing warm with anger and contempt as I told it, while her benignant face showed no symptom of the indignation that glowed in mine; she pitied and soothed me, but made no comment.