"And I," said his wife, "will seek out the stranger. Goody Brown is a kind woman, but the poor lady may not obtain all she needs in the farm-house. Did you hear her name, Lovel?"
"No," answered the youth, with unaccountable hesitation; "but you will find it embroidered on this handkerchief, which I picked up on the beach in coming along. The cambric is wet and drenched with sand, but you can perhaps make it out."
Lady Phipps took the handkerchief and examined the embroidery. "A coronet," she muttered: "this looks well. But the name—B—Barbara—Barbara Stafford. Stafford—that is a good old English name. Sir William, I will surely go and see her."
CHAPTER VI.
A GUIDE TO THE FARM-HOUSE.
The next day after her spectral shrouds were first seen in the harbor, the good ship came up to her wharf. Among the first passengers that landed was a dark, foreign-looking man, apparently somewhat under thirty years of age. He stood upon the wharf with a small leathern bag in his hand, as if uncertain where to go; but his eyes, black as midnight and splendid as diamonds, turned excitedly from object to object, as if he took a vivid interest in every thing that surrounded him. At last they fell on one of the sailors who had helped Barbara Stafford down the side of the ship that stormy afternoon. With an eager step he approached the man.
"Have you heard? did the boatmen bring her safe through the storm?" he questioned. "The lady—the lady I am speaking of. Did she suffer?—is she safe and well?"
The man laughed. "She is safe enough in Goody Brown's farm-house," he said, "and well, too, if the souse she got in the water didn't give her a cold. But it was an awful tough piece of work, I tell you. If it hadn't been for that old man, who didn't seem to have so much in him, for he was thin as a shad, they would all have gone to Davie's locker, sure as a gun. You never in your born days saw such a tussel as they had with the breakers the boatmen say."
"Then she is safe and well; for that God be thanked," said the stranger, turning away. "What more have I to ask or do?"