A STORM-WAIF;

OR, TWO ST. DAVID'S DAYS.

BY HOWELL DAVIES, AUTHOR OF

"STOLEN FROM THE SEA," "THE HUNTSMAN'S LEAP," "OUR PROMPTER'S DAUGHTER," &C.,

&c.

PART I.

A wild, blustering night on the western coast; a night of rain and sleet and bitter, biting wind; a night on which many a gallant ship went down within hail of this rugged island-home of ours! It was the night of the 29th February, and that made it all the more memorable, for even to this day people who dwelt along that coast speak of it as the stormy Leap-year. All through the chill, dark January days harsh tempests had raged with an almost unbroken fury, and had carried their fierce battle on into the middle of February. Then there came a lull, and it seemed as though the genial spring-time meant to offer some early amends for the desolating winter months. But, alas! for human speculation, the quiet, balmy freshness which promised so much, proved nothing but a brief holiday, in which the stormfiend gathered together his spent forces for a tremendous final effort. And so it happened that that 29th of February became engraven on the memory of more than one stricken heart whose beloved had gone down at sea.

The coast-guardsman had left his snug home in Bosheston village early in the evening, and had been out for long hours on the dreadful cliffs, whose sheer heights presented an iron front to the fierce Atlantic waves. In the momentary pauses of the storm, when the driving sleet lifted for an instant, he had watched with an anxious gaze the lights of vessels scudding past in the darkness, far out at sea.

"God help 'em if they fail to hold their own out there to-night," he muttered to himself, as he bent his burly form to face the wind. "It makes a fellow shudder to think of what would happen to 'em if they drove in here! Heaven send I mayn't see anything o' that sort to-night!"

He stopped suddenly, before he had well finished his gloomy thought, and listened intently. A landsman in that tempest would have detected no sound beyond the howling wind and hissing sleet, and the awful thunder of the breakers for miles along that shoreless coast. But the keen ear of the trained preventive-officer caught another sound of awful import-the

monotonous boom of a signal-gun, that pitiful, pleading voice of a ship in distress! Who that has once heard it can ever forget it?

Again it trembled forth, distinct and terrible, amidst the shrieking voices of the tempest.

"Ah! it's coming nearer," cried the lonely watcher hoarsely, as he raised his telescope and peered seaward. For a moment or two he could make out nothing in that seething mass of waves, running mountains high, and then breaking with a roar of fury against the impregnable cliffs. But as he gazed a vivid flash of lightning lit up the terrific scene, and revealed a sight that blanched the cheek of that strong man and paralysed all his powers, so that the glass dropped from his hands unheeded, and a bitter cry rose from his lips, "God in Heaven, help them! they are doomed-lost, every one of 'em!"

In that instantaneous flash he had seen a large steamer, her decks crowded with passengers, borne like a feather along the crests of those dreadful waves to a certain and hopeless destruction. Nearer and nearer she drifted, louder and quicker came the booming sounds of her guns as rocket after rocket shot up into the black and pitiless sky. At last a huge billow seized her, as a giant would lift a straw, and dashed her with terrific force high against the jagged face of the cliff, where she seemed to cling for a moment like a thing of life, and then, parting asunder from stem to stern, she sank for ever into the black and boiling waters at the base of the cliff.

An agonising simultaneous cry from five hundred throats-a maddening, fearful cry that rent the heavens with its anguishand all was over! The fierce tempest howled past, the leaping, hurrying surges tore on, and that cargo of living, beating human hearts went down to their dreamless rest!

All

Towards the chill hours of daybreak the tempest died away as though satiated with its gorge upon life and treasure. along the surface of the waters, as far as the eye could reach, was strewn wreckage of every description; mute, pathetic evidence of lips for ever silent, hearts that should throb no

more.

John Price, the coast-guardsman, accompanied by a dozen sturdy men from the village, was moving slowly and cautiously along the cliffs' edge, peering into every hole and cranny in a hopeless search for some tell-tale remnant of the large steamer whose destruction he had witnessed some hours before.

"Ah, Master John, there beant much chance of our finding anything belonging to them poor things!" said one of the searchers.

"No, no," answered another, "these 'ere sou'-westers mostly makes a clean job of it, when tha taakes it up as tha did last night."

"You are talking a bit too fast, my lads," quoth the officer. "Unless my eyes are much worse than they were yesterday, I can see something down there, very much like a youngster. And a living one too, by all the powers!" he shouted in sudden excitement, pointing, as he spoke, to a fissure in the rocks beneath him. His companions were incredulous for a moment.

"See! it's moving now," he exclaimed, "Quick with the ropes, boys! Now, steady! Don't get flustered or you'll jerk me against the cliff and knock the wind out of me before I get down."

Carefully and steadily they lowered the plucky, cool-headed fellow, until he was able to swing himself in and draw forth from its strange place of refuge the little one whom Providence had so miraculously preserved. Steadily and carefully his companions drew him up again, with his novel treasuretrove wrapped close in his strong, brave arms. The men gathered round him and looked with open-mouthed wonder and awe at the little life so marvellously snatched from the very grasp of death. They could only conjecture that, as the steamer broke up, an incoming wave had washed the little child into its wonderful hiding-place, and had left it there. One of its delicate, blue-veined shoulders was bruised, but beyond that it appeared to be none the worse for its perilous adventures. Some careful, tender hands had wrapped it in a little eiderdown quilt, hurriedly snatched from its cradle, and had secured it with a sailor's oil-skin jacket carefully buttoned around it.

Honest John Price dropped a hot tear upon the tiny baby-face as he tenderly bore it home to his cosy cottage and gave it into his wife's arms, remarking in a suspiciously husky voice,

"Here, missis! I have brought ye a youngster at last. It'll require a goodish bit of looking after, just now, I can tell ye." And then, in his own terse sailor fashion, he imparted to the wife of his bosom the singular story of its discovery and rescue

Now, although Mrs. Price had no children of her own living, she had laid three curly heads to rest in Bosheston churchyard, and so she, being a true woman, indulged in a "good cry over the helpless, nameless infant whom an inscrutable Providence had given to her care, and then and there took the little one into that softest and sweetest of all human shelters, that safest of havens, a loving woman's heart. Both she and her good man being simple, emotional, superstitious children of the Cymri, took it as a favourable omen that this baby-girl had been given to their care upon St. David's Day; more especially as by a romantic coincidence the eider-down quilt in which it was enfolded bore the letters "S. D.," the very initials of the saint himself.

PART II.

Colonel Danvers and his wife had spent the winter at Tenby, having been recommended by the latter's physician to do so for more than one reason, but chiefly because Mrs. Danvers suffered from a nervous disorder of long standing, which necessitated quiet, combined with cheerful surroundings. As the physician sagaciously remarked, "There are few places where those excellent remedies are to be found in better proportions than in the Queen of Welsh Watering-places."

So it came about that these good folk-whom some hidden sorrow had aged before their time-settled down to the dreamy, out-of-the-world existence of a Tenby winter. There were times when the melancholy tones of the sobbing sea awoke a strange unrest in their hearts, and laid bare the gaping wound of an old grief. It was evident to the few acquaintances whom they admitted to an intimacy that there was a sealed page in the past history of this worthy couple of a peculiarly painful nature. And, of course, Tenby society made all sorts of frantic efforts to get at the record, and, failing that, made up, with an ingenuity common to such gossiping localities, a story of its own, which didn't bear the faintest resemblance to the facts, but was sufficiently sensational to be appreciated.

St. David's Day broke warm and bright upon the lovely bay, till it seemed like the commencement of an early summer, with its soft winds creeping up from the west. Out of doors one would never have imagined that it was the dawning of a month given over to blustering storms and nipping noreasters. The chance visitors in the pretty little town, looking its best and brightest to-day, are all out and about early, determined to make the most of the genial spring sunshine and the sweet spring flowers.

Colonel and Mrs. Danvers, who purpose leaving Tenby in another week, have seized this favourable opportunity for a long drive, and after an early breakfast start for their first and last visit to the grand coast in the neighbourhood of Stackpole, where may be witnessed some of the most impressive and beautiful effects of the strife that is being perpetually waged between sea and land, rock and tempest.

After a brisk, pleasant drive, they arrive at the quiet little village of Bosheston, and passing through it make their way to St. Govan's Chapel. As they turn out of the sleepy little settlement, they overtake the coastguardsman, who is leisurely strolling along, pipe in mouth, and telescope under arm, in the direction of the cliffs.

Fifteen years have passed lightly over the head of bluff John Price, whose habits of life are wont to run in a very straight and easy groove. There are just a few more grey hairs in his head and beard than there were when we saw him last, and the

crows-feet near his honest blue eyes have deepened and hardened with the fleeting years.

As the carriage containing Colonel Danvers and his wife approaches, he draws on one side and touches his hat with respectful dignity. The carriage draws up, and its occupants enter at once into an animated conversation with the garrulous old sailor, whose familiarity with every square inch of the locality, and the stories and legends with which it teems, renders him a more than usually interesting companion and guide to the strangers. They are charmed with his wild traditions, which he honestly desires them to take as he has taken them, cum grano salis, and with his roughly poetical descriptions of the scenery of this weird spot under all its varied aspects of season and weather; its tender spring hues and delicate shadows; its summer glory of golden sea and rich green turf; the deep, misty beauty of its autumn afternoons; the awful grandeur, the indescribable splendour of its winter storms, when the fierce spirits of wreck and disaster are abroad upon the waters.

"Ah," said the Colonel, "those sleeping waves must be very terrible when they are lashed into fury, and there's precious little mercy in that long line of iron cliffs."

"You're right, sir!" responded Price. "The poor creature that looks for shelter on this 'ere coast in a westerly gale don't know much about it."

"How very dreadful!" sighed gentle-hearted Mrs. Danvers, as the memory of an old grief brought the tears to her eyes.

"I suppose," continued the Colonel, musingly, "that no one ever escapes to tell the story of a wreck on these wild, sheer headlands ?"

"Well, you see, sir, the good Lord do work a miracle now and again even in these times, when it pleases Him," quoth the sailor, with a solemn shake of his head. "Leastways He did in one case as come under my notice on this very spot, a'most. Do you see that nasty bit o' cliff just yonder, ma'am? Well, I found a little one safe in a cleft o' that very rock, early in the morning after the worst storm that ever I see in all my time, ashore or afloat."

"What did you say you found, my good man?" Mrs. Danvers questioned. "A little one? Not a child, surely!"

"Yes, ma'am, a child sure enough, and a sweet little angel she's proved to me and my old missis, ever since that morning when the Lord sent her to us, all unbeknown, as you might say, ma'am."

And then John Price told the story of the rescue, with flushed cheek and sparkling eye, for it lay very near the core of his true, strong heart, and he never tired of telling it, or omitted the smallest detail in its narration. He had repeated