"I'm Doctor Mervyn," said the doctor, making his bow, and eyeing the stranger curiously.
"Oh! Thanks, Doctor Mervyn! I hope it is not a long way from your house, I am here very ridiculously circumstanced. I should not have had any clothes, if it had not been for a very lucky accident, and for a day or two I shall be totally without money--a mere Robinson Crusoe."
"Oh, that don't matter; I shall be very happy to see after you in the meantime, if there should be anything in my way," answered the doctor, bluntly.
"You are very kind, thanks. This place, they tell me, is called Malory. What Mr. Ware is that to whom it belongs?"
"The Honourable Mr. Ware, brother of Lord H----. He is travelling on the Continent at present with his wife, a great beauty some fifteen years since; and his daughter, his only child, is at present here with her governess."
"Oh, I thought some one said he had two?"
The doctor re-asserted the fact, and for some seconds the stranger looked on the floor abstractedly.
"You wished a word or two of advice, I understand?" interrupted the doctor at length. "You have had a narrow escape, sir--a tremendous escape! You must have been awfully shaken. I don't know how you escaped being smashed on those nasty rocks."
"I am pretty well smashed, I fancy," said the young man.
"That's just what I wanted to ascertain."
"From head to foot, I'm covered with bruises," continued the stranger; "I got off with very few cuts. I have one over my temple, and half-a-dozen here and there, and one here on my wrist; but you need not take any trouble about them--a cut, when I get one, heals almost of itself. A bit of court-plaster is all I require for them, and Mrs. Something, the housekeeper here, has given me some; but I'm rather seedy. I must have swallowed a lot of salt water, I fancy. I've got off very well, though, if it's true all the other people were drowned. It was a devil of a fluke; you'd say I was the luckiest fellow alive, ha, ha, ha! I wish I could think so."
"There are very few men glad to meet death when it comes," said Doctor Mervyn. "Some think they are fit to die, and some know they are not. You know best, sir, what reason you have to be thankful."
"I'm nothing but bruises and aches all over my body. I'm by no means well, and I've lost all my luggage, and papers, and money, since one o'clock yesterday, when I was flourishing. Two or three such reasons for thankfulness would inevitably finish me."
