82 THE SHIP-WRECKED VILLAGER. 



rippled it into mimic waves, with the power of which our 

 hapless wayfarer soon found herself weakly battling. Who 

 then would have given a straw's end for her little life ? not 

 one, I trow, of the best friends she had in all her little world. 

 Yet a friend of the helpless, better than all, did provide a 

 straw to which she was able to cling in her dire extremity. 

 On this same straw or stick or spar, it matters not what, but 

 on a something large enough and light enough to supply her 

 with a raft, she floated about, now here now there, till at last 

 she was carried, where do you think ? back again to the 

 foot of the old oak pollard inhabited by her fair weather 

 friends. There the subsiding waters left her, and as soon as a 

 little recovered, our tempest-tossed traveller looked around for 

 some member of the inhospitable family, but they were all 

 ivtiml to their inner chamber, from whence she could discover 

 nothing of their presence, except here and there a sharp little 

 l>lack eye, peering out at her from behind a convenient crevice. 

 She hardly knew, indeed, why she looked after them at all ; 

 < \m thought of begging was at an end. All her wants, as she; 

 believed, were ended too ; but feeling very cold and benumbed, 

 -he crept by a prodigious effort, which seemed her last, into a 

 cranny near the bottom of the old pollard, which, hollow as it 

 \\ a y, had a great deal more heart (for her) than its churlish 

 occupants. The short winter's day was nearly at a close, and 

 our little busy-body all her business seeming at an end, still 

 lay within her place of refuge. Perishing with hunger, cold, 



