"Worthy souls! They might as well have spared their well-fed nags, and have remained at home snugly housed in their chimney-corner. ''Tis the early bird that gets the worm.' They had missed it by hours. The spoil was housed. It was buried in cottage gardens, and cabbages planted over it. It was secreted among the thatch, where even the best trained bird-nesting urchin would have missed it. It was stored away under more than one hollow hearth-stone, on which a cheerful wood-fire was crackling and blazing. When were the 'womenkind' in a wrecker's village at a loss for expedients?
"But a discovery was made that afternoon, which, for the moment, made the boisterous gentleman from Lloyd's falter in his denunciations, and hushed the menaces of the indignant and well-dressed personage who protected the revenue, and saddened the few hearts amongst us not entirely devoid of feeling.
"On a little knoll—called in memory of an unfortunate suicide, 'The Mad Maiden's Knoll,'—was found the body of a lady, youthful and fair, and by her side that of a little infant, a few weeks old. The babe, carefully swathed in countless warm wrappers, was lying in a rude cradle of wicker-work; this was firmly fastened to the lady's waist, who, on her part, had been securely lashed to a spar. 'Twas a piteous sight! But one's sympathies were called into still more painful exercise when it was found that the unfortunate lady's corpse had been rifled by some unprincipled marauder; that both ears had been torn, and two of her fingers had been crushed and broken in the attempt to plunder them of the rings with which they had been laden. Nor was this all. Every part of her dress had been carefully examined. Her stays had been ripped open, and a packet, assumed to be of value, had apparently been taken thence. What strengthened this surmise was the fact that a fragment of a purple morocco note-case still adhered to her dress. This fragment bore the words in gilt letters, 'Bank Notes;' below were the initials 'F.H.B.' The sight drew forth general expressions of pity: but pity gave place to indignation when the district surgeon joined the group, and after a careful examination of the body, said slowly, 'I suspect—I more than suspect—I am almost positive, that this lady reached the shore alive. The winds and waves have not destroyed her. She has perished by the hand of another. Look here,' and he pointed to a small dark rim round the neck, 'this is the effect of strangulation; and my belief is that the corpse before us is that of a murdered woman.'
"The coroner of the district was summoned, a jury empanneled, and the simple facts relative to the discovery of the bodies of the woman and infant were briefly placed on record. Few cared to speak openly. All had an interest in saying as little as possible. 'Return an open verdict, gentlemen; return an open verdict by all means,' suggested the wary official; 'that is the shortest course you can adopt; safe and perfectly legal; it decides nothing, contradicts nothing, concludes nothing.' No advice could be more palatable to the parties he addressed. 'Found dead,' was the ready response; 'but by what means, drowning or otherwise; there is no evidence to show.'
"The coroner was delighted.
"'Precisely so; quite sufficient. My gig, and a glass of brandy and water.'"
* * * * *
"No one claimed the bodies. Early interment was necessary; and a few hours after the inquest was concluded, mother and child were consigned to their parent earth.
"Six weeks afterward, an elderly man, with a most imperious manner and a foreign accent, came down to the village and asked countless questions relative to the shipwreck. The unhappy lady, he said, was his niece; and earnest were the inquiries he made touching a large sum of money, which, to his certain knowledge, she had about her when she went on shipboard. Of this money, as a matter of course, no satisfactory tidings were forthcoming. He then became violent; called the village a nest of pirates; cursed the inhabitants without mercy; hoped that heaven's lightnings would speedily fall, and raze the hamlet to the ground; and indulged in a variety of comments, some just, some foolish, and all angry.
"But with all his anxiety about his niece, and all his burning indignation against her plunderers, he never visited the unhappy lady's grave; never directed a stone to be placed over her; never deplored her fate; never uttered a remark about her infant, save and except an avowal of his unbounded satisfaction that it had perished with the mother-his ever-recurring subject of regret was, not that he had lost his niece, but that he had lost her money!