It was to all appearance dead, but the skilled hand of the physician detected a faint fluttering at the heart, and the discovery seemed to arouse him in a moment from the torpor and half insanity of his manner. Ringing the bell, he ordered blankets to be brought, and then proceeded to use other restoratives which he had close at hand.
For some time, however, it seemed that all their efforts were in vain, and nearly an hour passed before there were any signs of life, but at last there came a little faintly drawn breath, and the doctor redoubled his exertions to fan the faint spark of life into a flame again.
The effect of these exertions was scarcely less marked upon himself than upon the child, and Bob could only stare in blank amazement when he saw the change in the gloomy, misanthropic doctor. Brisk, active, energetic, decided, his bowed form stood erect, and the fire in his dark eyes flashed back a denial of anything like insanity.
And when at last, the heavy blue eyes of the little girl slowly opened, a smile broke over all the face of her deliverer. It was the first time he had been known to smile for ten years.
"Now, boy," he said, addressing Bob, "your baby will live, but you had better leave her here a bit, till she gets well."
"Yes, sir," answered the boy, pulling at his hair, but still staring in amazement at the doctor, and the wonderful transformation that had passed over him within the last hour.
"You can come and take her in a day or two, when she gets well," said the housekeeper as he was leaving, and the doctor nodded his acquiescence in his housekeeper's suggestion.
Bob ran to tell his mother of his adventure, and from her heard that most of the passengers and crew had been saved, but that the captain of the vessel had been washed overboard and drowned.
A month passed; the rescued passengers and crew had all departed from the lonely fishing village—all but the little waif, ill at Dr. Mansfield's. No one had come to claim her, and no one could tell to whom she belonged; the uncertainty which for some time hung over her, as to whether she would live or die, made this of secondary importance.
But soon after the last of the passengers had departed, an improvement took place in the child, the fever left her, and she was able to look around and notice her strange nurses. And to her, they did appear very strange, for she turned from every one but the doctor, refusing to make friends with any but him. She appeared to be about two years old, and could just lisp two words, "Milly" and "papa." By the former she meant herself, and the latter she applied to Dr. Mansfield. There was a little odd jargon of some foreign language that she babbled sometimes, but nothing of her name or parentage could be discovered from it.