The nearest light appeared not to be over half a mile distant, and the pale moon came out from behind the piles of black clouds to guide his steps. The cold north-west wind had begun to blow, and it chilled the wanderer to his very bones. He quickened his steps down the declivity, and soon reached a rude, one-story dwelling, at the door of which he knocked. He saw the light in the house, but no one answered his summons, and he repeated it more vigorously than before. Then a window was cautiously thrown open a few inches.
"Who's there?" asked a woman.
"A stranger," replied Harvey, shivering with cold, so that he could hardly utter the words.
"My husband's over to the village, and I can't let no strangers in at this time of night," added the woman.
"I've been cast away on the coast, and I'm really suffering," drawled the steward, in broken sentences.
"Cast away!" exclaimed the wife of the man who was over at the village, as she dropped the sash.
The terrible storm which had spent its fury upon sea and land was enough to convince her that men might have been shipwrecked; and this was not the first time that those treacherous ledges off High Rock, as the cliff was called, had shattered a good vessel. The woman hastened to the door, and threw it wide open. The pale, shivering form of Harvey Barth, the overcoat he wore still dripping with water, was enough to satisfy her that the visitor had no evil intentions.
"Come in," said she; and when the steward saw the comfortable room in the house, he required no second invitation. "Why, you are shivering with cold!"
"Yes marm; I'm not very well, and getting wet don't agree with me," replied Harvey, his teeth still chattering.
The room to which he was shown was the parlor, sitting-room, and kitchen of the cottage. On the hearth was a large cooking-stove, in which the woman immediately lighted a fire. She piled on the dry wood till the stove was full, and in a few moments the room was as hot as the oven of the stove.