"How is she this morning, Mr. Heale?" "Well--poor thing, a little light-headed last night: but kindly when I went in last." "Whew! I hope she has not fallen in love with me. She may fancy me her property--a private waif and stray. Better send for the Coast-guard officer, and let him claim me as belonging to the Admiralty, as flotsom, jetsom, and lagend; for I was all three last night." "You were, indeed, sir," said Frank, who began to be a little tired of this levity; "and very thankful to Heaven you ought to be." Frank spake this in a somewhat professional tone of voice; at which the stranger arched his eyebrows, screwed his lips up, and laid his ears back, like a horse when he meditates a kick, "You must be better acquainted with my affairs than I am, my dear sir, if you are able to state that fact.--Doctor! I hear a patient coming into the surgery." "Extraordinary power of hearing, to be sure," said Heale, toddling down stairs, while the stranger went on, looking Frank full in the face. "Now that old fogy's gone down stairs, my dear sir, let us come to an understanding at the beginning of our acquaintance. Of course, you're bound by your cloth to say that sort of thing to me, just as I am bound by it not to swear in your company: but you'll allow me to remark, that it would be rather trying even to your faith, if you were to be thrown ashore with nothing in the world but an old jersey and a bag of tobacco, two hundred miles short of the port where you hoped to land with fifteen hundred well-earned pounds in your pocket." "My dear sir," said Frank, after a pause, "whatsoever comes from our Father's hand must be meant in love. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.'" A quaint wince passed over the stranger's face. "Father, sir? That fifteen hundred pounds was going to my father's hand, from whosesoever hand it came, or the loss of it. And now what is to become of the poor old man, that hussy Dame Fortune only knows--if she knows her own mind an hour together, which I very much doubt. I worked early and late for that money, sir; up to my knees in mud and water. Let it be enough for your lofty demands on poor humanity, that I take my loss like a man, with a whistle and a laugh, instead of howling and cursing over it like a baboon. Let's talk of something else; and lend me five pounds, and a suit of clothes. I shan't run away with them, for as I've been thrown ashore here, here I shall stay." Frank almost laughed at the free and easy request, though he felt at once pained by the man's irreligion, and abashed by his Stoicism;--would he have behaved even as well in such a case? "I have not five pounds in the world." "Good! we shall understand each other better." "But the suit of clothes you shall have at once." "Good again! Let it be your oldest; for I must do a little rock-scrambling here, for purposes of my own."