therefore compelled, notwithstanding all his disinterested exertions, to retain in his possession the twenty-four bank bills, about which he still thought it his duty to maintain inviolable secrecy. Lest, however, sudden death amid the perils of his vocation should carry him off from his family, he placed beside the old pocket-book a paper in his handwriting, solemnly enjoining his wife and children, should no owner have previously appeared, to hand over the contents to some competent authority.

Three years passed away, and no relative, or even acquaintance, had come forward to lament the deceased. Times, meanwhile, had gone harder than ever with Dacheux. A bitter winter covered the Seine with blocks of ice, which partly destroyed his humble cabin, shattered nearly all his furniture, and left his family all but destitute. His wife and faithful associate in acts of humanity was seized with a serious illness, requiring constant nursing and expensive medicines; while he himself was attacked with acute rheumatism, which crippled him for a time in every limb. In the midst of all this distress, it was little the labour of his children could add to the small income of the suffering household; but if even the sick man's glance rested for a moment with a wishful expression on the desk which contained the twenty-four bank bills, its upward direction would immediately seem to say, Please God, whatever may be the extent of our trials, I will keep sacred to the last the charge He has intrusted to me !"

66

His eye rested upon it with a proud and delighted consciousness of integrity rewarded, when, shortly after (in a ceremony at which the writer was present), a deputation from the free masons of Paris, in presence of more than twelve hundred spectators of all ranks and ages, waited upon him with a voluntary subscription, sufficient to replace on its original footing his benevolent establishment, and conferred upon him, amid shouts of applause and admiration, the unfading title of L'Homme du Rivage! ("Man of the Shore!")

But it was not only as an asylum for the resuscitated from drowning that this good Samaritan's house was gratuitously restored. It had long been the resort of every wounded workman on the banks of the Seine. If, by the collision of two unwieldy wood rafts, a poor fellow got a bruise on the arm or a jam of the leg, he would hobble as best he might to good M. Dacheux, and have his hurts dressed as skilfully and more kindly than in any hospital. If a poor female fagot-seller stumbled under her burden, while climbing the steep steps of the Quai de L'Ecole, and got, as may be supposed, an ugly fall, her legs would still drag her to Madame Dacheux, where the softest bandage and most healing ointment were set off by motherly sympathy and Christian charity.

Among the many wounded persons thus claiming the good

offices of "The Man of the Shore," there came one fine spring evening a young man, whose right hand had been grievously crushed by a barrel of saltpetre, which had slipped from him a few minutes before, while rolling it on the quay. The thumb seemed well-nigh destroyed, and two fingers terribly lacerated; and the agony of the sufferer was so intense, that, spite of his bodily strength, tears were trickling down his face. The skilful Dacheux, after washing, according to his custom, the formidablelooking wound with warm wine, declared there was no fracture. But the hurt was of a nature to require the greatest care and attention, and having bandaged it up with the proper applications, and prepared a sling, he strongly advised the youth to return twice a-day to have his hand dressed, as long as it remained unhealed.

This was not an invitation to be despised, and the lad failed not to avail himself of it, night and morning, for several following days. The wound, serious as it was, soon did credit to the skill of the well-known cottage practitioners; and the jolly young workman, one of the handsomest specimens of humanity among his companions, soon recovered his naturally high spirits. No sooner was his cure completed, than he came one Sunday, in his holiday attire, to salute his physician, and asked, with wellmeaning abruptness- -"What do I owe you, Monsieur Dacheux ?" "And what do you mean by that, my good friend?" "Mean! why, to pay you your dues. Five-and-twenty dressings, and all that linen and ointment, must come to"Neither more nor less than a shake of the hand, my dear fellow! Show me you can bear a squeeze of the one I cured, and we are quits. I never take money from any one." "Oh, that will never do; and though I am but a porter on the quay, and have both my mother and grandmother on my hands, I have wherewithal to pay, I assure you." "And I assure you once more that you owe me nothing. But tell me what countryman you are?" "I come from Villeneuve le Roi, near Sens. My father was killed at Austerlitz; they say he was a gallant fellow. I never knew him. My mother, left a widow at nineteen, with no child but me, went to live with her father, who was a dealer in wines, and had, I may say, as pretty a bit of land on the banks of the Yonne, and as snug a house at Villeneuve, as you could see. Well, we've had to sell it all!" "And for what reason?" "D'ye see, Monsieur Dacheux, my poor grandfather, one of the honestest men in the world, had but one fault-he liked his glass. I'm afraid I take after him. He was employed as a salesman by some of the first houses at Sens, and came on their account to recover money for them in Paris. One day, when he had received a pretty large sum, he disappeared, without our ever having been able to get the smallest tidings of his fate. He was subject to fits of blood to the head, poor and no doubt this had happened to him somehow, and

man;

old

rogues must have taken advantage of it to rob and bury him secretly. But it was the worse for us. The Paris merchants could prove they had paid him the money, and as we had nothing to show for it to the wine-growers of Sens, of course we had to sell all to satisfy them, which left us without a sou. My grandmother fretted herself into a palsy, and my poor mother, having no means of living at Villeneuve, had to come to Paris, where she toils hard making shirts for my fellow-workmen; and get, when all goes well, three francs a-day; so that, with the help of God, we manage to live." Pray what might be your grandfather's age?" "Hard upon seventy.' "And his height?"

I

'Much the same as mine; about five feet ten."

do

"And his name,

if you please?" "Why, the same I bear after him; Maurice Goddard." “And may I ask the amount of the sum which he had drawn, and you were forced to make good?" "Just twentyfour thousand francs; enough to ruin us out and out. But why you ask me all these questions?" Why, to be useful to you, if I should have opportunity." "How you do look at me, Monsieur Dacheux!" "Not for nothing, believe me; you have inspired me with a lively interest. I have taken a great fancy to know your mother and grandmother likewise." "We're highly honoured, I'm sure; but if so, you'll have to take the trouble to call on us, for the poor dear old woman is past moving." "You may expect me to-morrow: what address?" "Rue Boucher, No. 15, up five pair of stairs. Oh how delighted they'll be when I tell them of your visit! They know that to you I owe my cured hand. Good-by, Monsieur Dacheux." "Till tomorrow, friend Goddard."

Early next day "The Man of the Shore" was at the house specified, eager to confirm, by authentic proofs, the surmises floating in his mind. He found the humble abode distinguished by the peculiar neatness of those who have seen better days. The venerable grandmother, seated in her wheeling chair, seemed, in spite of bodily infirmity, in possession of all her faculties. Her daughter-in-law, Maurice's mother, was busy at her needle, while her son read to both, from an old paper, the report of the honours conferred on Dacheux by his grateful countrymen. His presence gave rise to transports of joy in this worthy family. Madame Goddard blessed him for his care of her son; and the old palsied woman thanked him for the last bright gleam on her declining years.

It was not difficult to turn the conversation to the lost head of the united family-his painful disappearance, and the sad consequences which ensued from it. But the holder of the twenty-four thousand francs had enough to do to conceal his secret emotion, while putting to those, so deeply interested, the questions dictated by prudence. "Had your husband," he inquired of the old woman, "no mark or token by which he could have been recognised?"

"Oh dear, yes!" was her ready answer. "The poor fellow was in the first wars of the Revolution, and had two fingers shot off at the battle of Fleurus."

"From which hand?"

"The left and then at the great battle of Jemmappes he got a sabre cut from the right ear to the chin, which left such a lovely scar!"

"And may I ask if there was anything remarkable in his dress? what did he usually wear?"

66

Oh, at the time he was lost, an old gray greatcoat (for it was cold dirty weather), and under it an old hussar jacket, which he could only wear out so."

66 Oh," ," added Maurice's mother, "you forget he always wore a silver watch with a steel chain."

"Yes!" said the old dame sighing, "with a gold heart hanging from it, which I had given him the day we were engaged, and which never left him."

"But," abruptly interrupted Dacheux, now almost sure he was right, "a man in the habit of receiving sums of money must have carried a pocket-book."

"To be sure he did," replied three voices at once.

"And of what colour?"

Oh, black leather originally, but so worn by use, that you might have half fancied it red."

"And fastened," said the mother, "with a little steel clasp." "And inside," again sighed the grandmother, "my poor goodman always carried an image of his patron saint, St Maurice, which I gave him, when I was a girl, once upon his birthday. Ay me! 'tis a long, long while ago!"

66 But, sir," young Maurice could not help saying, “methinks, from your eager looks and anxious questionings, one might almost suppose you had some object in view."

"I have," replied Dacheux, convinced, from all these particulars, that the rightful heirs he had sought for so many years in vain now stood before him-"I have indeed a notion that, about the time you mention, an old man was taken out of the river, on whom a pocket-book was found; and I should not be at all surprised if you were to get back all it contained."

"You don't say so? And wouldn't it come apropos to let me marry Celestine, whom they wont let have me, because I have nothing?"

"And pray who may Celestine be?"

"The prettiest girl on all the quay, for whom I am dying. Fancy, Monsieur Dacheux, their letting me fall in love with her, and never hindering her a bit from loving me again; and then, when I wanted of course to marry her, asking me what I had to marry upon. And when I said just my four quarters, and I am sure they are substantial enough, they laughed in my face, and Celestine cried, and I was like to choke. I

appeal to you, Monsieur Dacheux, could a poor fellow be worse used?"

"And who is the father of your bride elect?"

"Monsieur Aubert, a rich fellow in the cider line."

"Ay! I should have something to say with him; for last summer, no farther back, I fished out his only son, who was taken with a fit while swimming at high water in the Seine. I'll see what can be done for you this very evening in that quarter; and you may come and hear the result at twelve o'clock

to-morrow."

"Oh, I'll be there without fail. But, dear sir, do you think there are any hopes?"

"It would be rash to promise; but we'll see."

Ah! sir," said the youth's mother modestly, "you would be doing us all a great service, for the poor boy neither eats nor sleeps as he used to do."

"Well, good people, all shall be done that lies in the power of man; but you have reason to look higher for the possible comfort and consolation of your latter days. I dare say no more at present; we shall meet to-morrow."

So saying, he left this interesting family, casting behind him a last look, so expressive of satisfaction, that we need not wonder if it laid the foundation for a thousand fond conjectures. None of them, however, came up in the faintest degree to the series of agreeable surprises awaiting them next day at the hands of the most upright and most friendly of human beings.

On Maurice's arrival at the cottage of Dacheux, he found there before him the father of his mistress, the same who had laughed to scorn his former pretensions; but who, meeting him now with the most cordial frankness, said, "Excuse me, Maurice, for having received somewhat coldly your request for my daughter's hand; but why did you conceal from me that you were worth four-and-twenty thousand francs, and that you were only waiting an opportunity to purchase warehouses, and set up for yourself?"

"What is all this you are saying?" stammered the bewildered Maurice. "I do not comprehend a word of it!"

"It shall be explained to you," replied good Dacheux, flying to his desk, and bringing forth the deposit so long and so discreetly preserved: "here is your own. If this pocket-book had contained a single name, the least word of direction to any one, you would have been put in possession of it next day, and your poor grandmother's property have been saved from the hammer. But though long foiled in my researches, it has pleased Heaven to grant me at length the joy of restoring it to its lawful proprietors. It can only belong to those who have so well described it; look at this black leather reddened by long use, this old steel clasp, and, above all, at the image of St Maurice. These twentyfour bank bills make the exact sum drawn by your grandfather,