But what boots it to tell a long and a sad story, when a very few words will serve our purpose! With the morning light Annie Deer gazed from her window, but the ship was gone, and the storm continued; and, as she looked, without making any particular effort to hear, the sound of a few distant guns caught her ear, and made her heart sink low. The tempest lasted the whole day. During the night it decreased, and the next morning there were found on various points of the coast the spars and timbers of a gallant vessel, on some of which were painted "The Earl Spencer!" The gentlemen of Lloyd's announced the loss of an outward-bound Chinaman. The owners of the Earl Spencer cursed the luck which had lost them a good voyage, and applied to the underwriters. The underwriters cursed their luck still more furiously, but paid the money. Mr. Deer thanked God that he had ensured to the full amount of his loan, and Annie Deer sat down, with widowed heart, to pass the rest of her life with very little interest in the things thereof. Her mother marked the varying colour of her cheek, the langour of her look, and the frequent tearfulness of her eye; and, kissing her tenderly, let fall a drop on the pale forehead of her only child. Annie Deer met with sympathy from one kindred being in her melancholy path, and it was all she hoped for, all she asked in life. Such was the first part of the story of Annie Deer. Now all stories, into whatsoever imaginary divisions they may be separated by the brains of the teller, have at least two parts; there is no getting rid of the beginning and the end. Having told the former, we must now turn to the latter, which is destined to be shorter still. Mr. Deer went to London, and was indemnified by the underwriters for the money he had advanced; and he returned to his dwelling, looking really sad for the loss of poor William Stanhope. He called upon the childless widow, and tried to comfort her; but she was not to be comforted. He spoke some soothing words to Annie, but Annie only wept the more; and Mr. Deer himself had a kind of perception that they had all suffered a loss which money could never repair. As the house was dull, and the village was dull, and everything about the place looked more or less gloomy since the loss of the Earl Spencer and poor William Stanhope, Mr. Deer betook himself one day, merely for the sake of relaxation, to the county town, purposing, as the pleasantest and most habitual way of amusing his thoughts, to look into all the accounts and proceedings of the very respectable firm in which the greater part of his fortune was still embarked. His partner was out, however, when he arrived; and Mr. Deer, strolling out into the town, was met by Mr. Pocock, the silversmith, and Mr. Pocock's retired brother John, the common councilman and orator.