"Here, lad," said Dirk, brokenly,—"here—be—the—little gal," and pointed to one corner, where, watched over by a thin, slovenly woman, the child lay on its little bed.
The mother did not take her eyes off the girl, and Noll went forward, with much inward repugnance, to look upon Dirk's treasure. The child's cheeks were flushed a bright red, and it lay with drowsy, heavy-lidded eyes, uttering, at intervals, a low wail.
Noll shivered, and involuntarily thought of those dreary, desolate graves which he stumbled upon in one of his rambles. Could nothing be done? Must the child die for lack of a little medicine? He looked through the little dirt-crusted window upon the tossing sea, and saw what a hopeless barrier it interposed between them and aid. He thought of Uncle Richard, and knew that it was useless to expect aid from that direction; and then he thought of Hagar! She was a good nurse, he remembered, and knew—or claimed to know—a vast deal about medicine. Perhaps she could help this child! he thought, with a glad heart, and if she could! His heart suddenly sank, for he remembered that the old housekeeper could not make a journey through the storm and tempest, even had she the necessary skill.
"But," he thought to himself, "I can tell her about the child,—it's got a fever,—and she can send medicines; and to-morrow, if it's pleasant, she can come herself!" and thinking thus, Noll turned to Dirk, with—
"I can get you some medicines, I think, from our old housekeeper. May I? Shall I try?"
The fisherman was silent with surprise. He would probably have sooner expected aid from across the raging sea than from this lad.
Noll read an answer in his eyes, and hastened to the door, and bounded away without waiting for any more words or explanations.
How fast it had grown dark while he was in Dirk's hut! The horizon was quite hidden, so was all the wide waste a half-mile from shore; but with the coming of night the sea had lost none of its thunder, nor the wind aught of its fierceness. Noll ran till he was out of breath. Then he walked, thinking that the homeward path was wonderfully long. Then he ran again, feeling almost as if the child's life depended upon his exertions, and seeming to hear its wail above all the din of wind and waves.
Suddenly he plashed into the water, up to his ankles, and this brought his headlong race to an abrupt termination. What could it mean? Then he remembered, with a sudden chill, what, in his eagerness and anxiety, he had entirely forgotten,—the tide was coming in, and was already over the path which Uncle Richard warned him against.
He looked back. The beach over which he had come glimmered faintly in the dusk, with its long line of breakers gleaming far up and down. Back there in the darkness, he thought, Dirk's child was dying for want of medicine. Oh! what to do? He looked down at the foam creeping about his ankles, and said to himself,—