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I rose and asked how long it would be before we could land, as some of us would give our ears for a cup of coffee. The medical officer and the customs officer immediately said, "But why wait? Come on shore. What can we do for you? Tell us what you need. All we want to do is to help you."

Then the doctor took us across the street to a café, and, oh how good that coffee was. We had been sixteen hours cramped in the boat, and I could hardly walk, and nearly tumbled down. Afterwards I confessed this to O'Hara, and he told me that he had been in the same state. forty-eight hours on end he had been at work, and most of the time at double pressure.

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It now appeared that when we were approaching the coast our lug-sails were noticed, so different from the native "lateen." So the people soon guessed rightly what had happened. Word was passed round that a shipwrecked crew was coming in, and the whole population was there to welcome us. Our men all day were heroes. They were treated handsomely in the café with food, and all the poor people of the place came with dry shirts and stockings and suits of clothes for the men, who had lost everything, and were very grateful. The captain told them to see that these clothes should all be returned when their own things were dry. But these poor fishing-folk, and also the leading men of the port, rebelled, and assured him they were free gifts.

VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXIII.

The hotel took in the whole crowd at a nominal rate, and every one was asking only to be allowed to help more in any way, and they knew so well what our men needed. It was quite touching. At 9 A.M. the crew had a big meal at the hotel, and most of them slept all day till their next meal at 6 P.M.

Not a man among them had saved any of their kit-not even the captain. I felt quite ashamed of having been forced to save a few of my things. On taking them out of the boat, water streamed from them for some minutes.

The captain spent the early hours in arranging for the crew's comfort. He telegraphed to his wife, and then sent word to the owners telling them of the safety of all on board. In the afternoon he got a reply directing him to take the crew to the British Consul at Cette.

We found that there was a steamer from Algiers just come in and starting for Cette at 11 P.M. So the captain aranged to convey the crew by her. I was very sorry to part from him, but thought it wiser to stop at least one night in Port Vendres to sleep and get things dry.

Before leaving, Captain O'Hara arranged to have a notice put in the local paper expressing the gratitude of himself and crew for the kindness of everyone, and assuring them that the people of Port Vendres would always be held in affectionate remembrance.

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IN QUEST OF A CURE.-III.

IN THE MIDI.

WE resolved when we made up our minds to spend a winter in the South of France that there should be nothing haphazard about our arrangements on this occasion. We had had enough of happy-go-lucky ways on that fatal journey Cathal and I had made to the Spa. Now, when venturing so far into a foreign land, all should be thought out to the least detail. I studied guide-books and time-tables till I almost knew the Riviera by heart, and finally, with the help of friends, we discovered a pension that seemed just what wanted, in a beautiful, quiet, sheltered little spot somewhere between Marseilles and Mentone. We engaged our rooms months beforehand, and except that my mother and I contrived to lose each other on the journey, we reached our destination without mishap.

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After all this arrangement it was a little disappointing to discover that our long-dreamtof home among the palms and mimosas was not quite all that we had hoped. It was certainly beautiful as any of our dreams. From quaint little windows we looked down over the tops of waving pine-trees to the Mediterranean washing almost to the garden walls. The November days were warm and sunny, and though the mistral blew every day for a month, it was pleasant to go to

sleep to the sound of swishing waves and murmuring trees. But the place was really not very sheltered, and although "madame" was kindness itself, her cooking swam in oil, and the stairs in her house were many and high, and perhaps we were too near the sea, and at all events before a month was over even "madame" agreed that her delightful pension was no place for "mademoiselle." Disillusioned by the result of our foresight and arrangement, we took flight one day in the middle of a gale of wind and made for what sounded a more likely spot farther along the coast, with no notion in the world of what might befall us there. At the station where we alighted Cook's man provided us obligingly with a list of pensions, and as we drove away on a tour of exploration we felt really happy and in our element once more. We had a couple of hours before sunset, and having been warned of the sudden chill that in the Midi comes into the air at that time of the evening, we felt that our fate must be settled just half an hour before the sun dipped into the sea. Cinderella at the ball was not more dependent on the striking of a clock.

How charming everything was that afternoon! The white houses round the bay, the hills rising behind with

their grey-green olive trees, the bright sunlight shining on the blue water! We liked everything, from the long road fringed with palms and peppertrees to the odd-looking houses in their brilliant gardens. We liked the queerly painted blue or green or pink houses, we liked the white houses that had festoons of flowers painted upon them, we were delighted with the blue porcelain jars set up on little niches on outside walls, as if the owners had been Catholics when they began to build and designed to make a shrine for their patron saint, and had become Protestants before they finished and decided that they must put up with a jar instead.

upon us and said that as it was so early in the season it was sure that she and madame would not quarrel about a price; and so just in time, before the sun began to sink into the sea, we became really installed in what were destined to be our winter quarters - inmates of the Villa Paradis.

We found ourselves in the position of guests who have arrived first at a party. The pension was empty of pensionaires, and we had the felicity of seeing them arrive in ones and twos and threes, till they overflowed from the house into the annexe, and till finally newcomers had to be turned away reluctantly Half a mile inland from the from our too-attractive doors. sea we stopped at the first To begin with, the two sweetpension on our list. It proved faced old ladies who owned the unsuitable and after a few place, the two Swiss maids, moments' parley we drove on the Provençal cook, and the again towards the hills. We youthful Italian house - boy stopped again, and the house were all engaged in ministerwas too gloomy; and again, ing to our sole comfort. The where a poor soul in the last old ladies had, to my eyes, a stages of consumption scared Scotch look. They wore black us away with his cough. And dresses and little black shawls, then we stopped at our own white lace collars and caps. pension. It was built on a They were, some one told us, terrace cut out of a hillside. "très dévotes"; and as I It had white marble steps and looked at them I said to mya porch half smothered in tea- self that good old ladies were roses. The garden was full of the same all the world over, mimosa and orange-trees, of and that these two fervent climbing geranium growing up Roman Catholics, who with the tree trunks, of heliotrope much fluttering and excitement luxuriating like a weed. There sometimes entertained M. le were green seats under the Curé to tea, had the air of orange - trees and summer- dear old pillars of a Scottish houses covered with creepers. Kirk. That they wore it There was the sweetest old "with a difference I was lady who spoke not one word forced to admit, when on of English, and she smiled Sunday morning madame re

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turned from church vid the World, would gaze silently at the combatants out of their great dark eyes, smiling a little in their slow, languid way. They would sit all day doing nothing contentedly, and hardly ever went out of the garden. Yet they seemed perfectly satisfied with their winter in France, and would talk hopefully of coming back another year.

market, green vegetables plainly peeping from a decorous decorous little basket she carried in her hand; and still more when, on Sunday afternoon, her sister approached me with the most innocent air in the world to ask if mademoiselle would "make a little game of the Bridge"! My imagination, I confess, faltered over the parallel I had drawn. Clearly I could carry it no further.

M.

The clientèle of the pension was cosmopolitan enough, but not English-speaking. We saw French, German, Dutch, Russian, and Spanish visitors arrive, but neither English nor Americans. By the middle of winter table d'hôte had become a meaningless babel of tongues to us, and the excitement and gesticulation evolved by an argument we could not follow entertained us vastly. K-, a vivacious little Parisian with eyeglasses and a pointed white beard, never permitted conversation to languish. He had "beaucoup beaucoup d'esprit," we were told; and certainly his wit had a marked effect on M. B- who sat opposite to him a typical compatriot, with his jovial face, his jet-black hair, and turned up mustachios. would laugh till he shook all over like a jelly at M. K -'s sallies, and argue a point with him in a tremendous big voice that completely collapsed sometimes into merriment. Two pretty dusky-haired Spanish girls from South America, who with their mother had come to spend a winter in the Old

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A dear Dutch lady, whose pretty hair was just beginning to be streaked with grey, would often translate for us, in the quaintest and prettiest English, the babel at table d'hôte. She was our chief friend among the pensionaires, and indeed seemed to be the friend and confidant of every one who came to the house. She was one of those women who carry their credentials in their faces, for one had only to look at her to be convinced that she was "a darling." It was she who knew how Madame A, who looked so sad, had lost an only daughter but three months ago; and how Mlle. B. suffered

so dreadfully from insomnia, though she appeared so gay and bright; and M. Cand Madame D had this or that, marking them out as appealing to our interest and sympathy, that of ourselves we should never have guessed at. She suffered from some malady of the heart, and could do little but lie in a chaise longue under the orange-trees in the garden; but what gaiety and courage were hers, and how perennially and engagingly interested she was in every

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body! It was to her, Protestant though she was, that Madame V confided her intention to consult St Antoine about her lost brooch. Madame V had of recent years become a Theosophist, but the brooch was a valuable one, and she had always been brought up to believe in St Antoine's kindness about lost property. She went up to the little church on the hill about it, and sure enough found the brooch immediately afterwards, and acknowledged the saint's kindness by a suitable donation to the village priest. She was an absentminded old lady, however, and presently our friend heard that the brooch had gone amissing again. And, "Oh, do you think it would seem too troublesome to St Antoine if I asked his aid SO soon again?" I hope our friend improved the occasion like a good Protestant; but whether or no, Madame V- appealed once more to the obliging saint, once more the brooch reappeared, and once more the little church on the hill was the richer for madame's gratitude. I suppose we should have been shocked, but how like a fairy story it was. In the Highlands I can remember an excellent and accomplished lady who was a staunch upholder of the Free Church in her day, and who, nevertheless, sent for a wise woman on more than one occasion to unbewitch a cow! Superstition dies hard.

It was our Dutch friend who knew all about the romance that presently enthralled the

Villa Paradis, the romance of a certain monsieur and that charming French mademoiselle with whom he talked so much at table d'hôte. With what interest the pensionaires observed the magnificent bouquets of rare flowers which Pierre with his broadest smile brought to mademoiselle's door, to be followed by fabulously expensive chocolates, for which monsieur had sent all the way to Paris. What a chill descended upon our meals when obviously something went wrong, and monsieur informed us with feeling that he was going away at once; and, when peace was restored and he changed his plans again, how merrily the babel of tongues sounded once more. monsieur's expensive chocolates were presented to our Dutch friend by mademoiselle, and from thence found their way to us. Not a few of them finally reached Scotland, and were despatched at a sitting by my young brother Cathal,an unsentimental fate monsieur could hardly have anticipated for them.

Some of

We were an ordinary enough set of pensionaires on the whole, no doubt, yet we can boast for the Villa Paradis of something uncommonly like a mystery. A lady and a young boy, apparently mother and son, arrived in it one day, and wrote themselves in the visitors' book as well, let us say Norwegians. Later the lady told madame la propriétaire that the boy was not her son, as had at first appeared, but her pupil. A certain state and

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