Tardif's expression grew more and more distressed.

"Mam'zelle knows," he said, stooping down to speak the more softly to
me, "there is no doctor nearer than Guernsey, and the night is not far
off. What are we to do?"

"Never mind, Tardif," I answered, resolving to be brave; "let the women
help me into bed, and perhaps I shall be able to sleep. We must wait
till morning."

It was more easily said than done. The two old women did their best, but
their touch was clumsy and their help slight, compared to Tardif's. I
was thoroughly worn out before I was in bed. But it was a great deal to
find myself there, safe and warm, instead of on the cold, hard pebbles
on the beach. Mother Renouf put my arm to rest upon a pillow, and bathed
and fomented my ankle till it felt much easier.

Never, never shall I forget that night. I could not sleep; but I suppose
my mind wandered a little. Hundreds of times I felt myself down on the
shore, lying helplessly, while great green waves curled themselves over,
and fell just within reach of me, ready to swallow me up, yet always
missing me. Then I was back again in my own home in Adelaide, on my
father's sheep-farm, and he was still alive, and with no thought but how
to make every thing bright and gladsome for me; and hundreds of times I
saw the woman who was afterward to be my step-mother, stealing up to the
door and trying to get in to him and me. Sometimes I caught myself
sobbing aloud, and then Tardif's voice, whispering at the door to ask
how mam'zelle was, brought me back to consciousness. Now and then I
looked round, fancying I heard my mother's voice speaking to me, and I
saw only the wrinkled, yellow face of his mother, nodding drowsily in