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