A Double Rescue—Introduction.  
It is a curious and interesting fact that Christmas-tide seemed to have a peculiar influence on the prospects of our hero Jack Matterby all through his life. All the chief events of his career, somehow, happened on or about Christmas Day.
 
Jack was born, to begin with, on a Christmas morning. His father, who was a farmer in the middle ranks of life, rejoiced in the fact, esteeming it full of promise for the future. So did his mother. Jack himself did not at first seem to have any particular feeling on the subject. If one might judge his opinions by his conduct, it seemed that he was rather displeased than otherwise at having been born; for he spent all the first part of his natal day in squalling and making faces, as though he did not like the world at all, and would rather not have come into it.
 
“John, dear,” said his mother to his father, one day not long after his birth, “I’m so glad he is a boy. He might have been a girl, you know.”
 
“No, Molly; he could never have been a girl!” replied the husband, as he gently patted his wife’s shoulder.
 
“Now, don’t laugh at me, John, dear. You know what I mean. But what shall we call him?”
 
“John, of course,” replied the farmer, with decision. “My father was called John, and his father was called John, and also his grandfather, and so on back, I have no doubt, to the very beginning of time.”
 
“Nay, John,” returned his wife, simply, “that could hardly be; for however many of your ancestors may have been Johns, the first, you know, was Adam.”
 
“Why, Molly, you’re getting to be quite sharp,” returned the farmer. “Nevertheless this little man is to be John, like the rest of us.”
 
Mrs Matterby, being meek, gave in; but she did so with a sigh, for she wished the little one to be named Joseph, after her own deceased father.
 
Thus it came to pass that the child was named John. The name was expanded to Johnny during the first period of childhood. Afterwards it was contracted to Jack, and did not attain to the simple grandeur of John till the owner of it became a man.
 
In the Johnny period of life our hero confined his attention almost exclusively to smashing and overturning. To overturn and to destroy were his chief amusements. He made war on crockery to such an extent that tea-cups and saucers were usually scarce in the family. He assaulted looking-glasses so constantly, that there was, ere long, barely enough of mirror left for his father to shave in. As to which fact the farmer used to say, “Never mind, Molly. Don’t look so down-hearted, lass. If he only leaves a bit enough to see a corner of my chin and the half of my razor, that will do well enough.” No window in the family mansion was thoroughly whole, and the appearance of a fat little fist on the wrong side of a pane of glass was quite a familiar object in the nursery.
 
As for toys—Johnny had none, so to speak. He had only a large basket full of bits, the misapplication of which to each other gave him many hours of profound recreation. Everything that would turn inside out was so turned. Whatever was by nature straight he bent, whatever bent he straightened. Round things he made square when possible, and square things round; soft things hard, and hard things soft. In short, nothing was too hard for Johnny. Everything that came into his clutches was subjected to what we may style the influence of experimental philosophy; and if Farmer Matterby had been a poor man he must soon have been ruined, but, being what is styled “well-to-do,” he only said, in reference to these things—
 
“Go ahead, my boy. Make hay while the sun shines. If you carry on as you’ve begun, you’ll make your mark somewhere in this world.”
 
“Alas!” remarked poor Mrs Matterby, “he has made his mark already everywhere, and that a little too freely!”
 
Nevertheless she was proud of her boy, and sought to subdue his spirit by teaching him lessons of self-denial and love out of the Word of God. Johnny listened intently to these lessons, gazing with large wondering eyes, though he understood little of the teaching at first. It was not all lost on him, however; and he thoroughly understood and reciprocated the deep love that beamed in his mother’s eyes.
 
Soon after Johnny had slid into the Jack period of life he became acquainted with a fisher-boy of his own age, whose parents dwelt in a cottage on the sea-shore, not a quarter of a mile from his own home, and close to the village of Blackby.
 
Natty Grove was as fine a little fellow as one could wish to see: fair, curly-headed, blue-eyed, rough-jacketed, and almost swallowed up in a pair of his father’s sea-boots which had been cut down in the legs to fit him. As to the feet!—well, as his father Ned Grove remarked, there was plenty of room for growth. Natty had no mother, but he had a little sister about three years of age, and a grandmother, who might have been about thirty times three. No one could tell her age for certain; but she was so old and wrinkled and dried up and withered and small, that she might certainly have claimed to be “the oldest inhabitant.” She had been bed-ridden for many years because of what her son called rum-matticks and her grandson styled rum-ticks.
 
The name of Natty’s little sister was Nellie; that of his grandmother, Nell—old Nell, as people affectionately called her.
 
Now it may perhaps surprise the reader to be told that Jack Matterby, at the age of nine years, was deeply in love. He had, indeed, been in that condition, more or less from the age of three, but the passion became more decided at nine. He was in love with Nell—not blue-eyed little Nellie, but with wrinkled old Nell; for that antiquated creature was brimming over with love to mankind, specially to children. On our hero she poured out such wealth of affection that he was powerfully attracted to her even in the period of Johnny-hood, and, as we have said, she captured him entirely when he reached Jack-hood.
 
Old Nell was a splendid story-teller. That was one of the baits with which she was fond of hooking young people. It was interesting to sit in the fisherman’s poor cottage and watch the little ones sitting open-mouthed and eyed gazing at the withered little face, in which loving-kindness, mingling with fun, beamed from the old eyes, played among the wrinkles, smiled on the lips, and asserted itself in the gentle tones.
 
“Jack,” said Mrs Matterby, on the Christmas morning which ushered in her boy’s ninth birthday, “come, I’m going to give you a treat to-day.”
 
“You always do, mammy, on my birthdays,” said Jack.
 
“I want you to go with a message to a poor woman,” continued the mother.
 
“Is that all?” exclaimed Jack, with a disappointed look.
 
“Yes, that’s all—or nearly all,” replied his mother, with a twinkle in her eye, however, which kept her son from open rebellion. “I want you to carry this basket of good things, with my best love and Christmas good-wishes, to old Nell Grove.”
 
“Oho!” exclaimed Jack, brightening up at once, “I’m your man; here, give me the basket. But, mother,” he added with a sudden look of perplexity, “you called old Nell a poor woman, and I’ve heard her sometimes say that she has everything............