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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40269
   :PG.Title: At the Black Rocks
   :PG.Released: 2012-07-18
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Edward \A. Rand
   :DC.Title: At the Black Rocks
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1903
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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AT THE BLACK ROCKS
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   .. _`Cover`:

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      Cover

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   .. _`"'Shove hard, but sing easy.'"  *Page 33*`:

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      :alt: "'Shove hard, but sing easy.'"  *Page 33*

      "'Shove hard, but sing easy.'"  *Page 33*

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      AT THE BLACK ROCKS

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      BY REV. EDWARD A. RAND

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      LONDON, EDINBURGH,
      DUBLIN, AND NEW YORK
      THOMAS NELSON
      AND SONS

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      CONTENTS

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      I.  `Was he worth Saving?`_
      II.  `Caught on the Bar`_
      III.  `Did the Schooner come back?`_
      IV.  `What was he here for?`_
      V.  `The Lighthouse`_
      VI.  `Fog`_
      VII.  `The Camp at the Nub`_
      VIII.  `Visitors`_
      IX.  `That open Book`_
      X.  `The Christmas Gift`_
      XI.  `At Shipton again`_
      XII.  `On which side Victory?`_
      XIII.  `What to do next`_
      XIV.  `Guests at the Lighthouse`_
      XV.  `The Storm Gathering`_
      XVI.  `The Storm Striking`_
      XVII.  `Thomas Trafton, Detective`_
      XVIII.  `Into a Trap`_
      XIX.  `A Place to Stop`_

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.. _`WAS HE WORTH SAVING?`:

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   AT THE BLACK ROCKS.

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   \I.

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   *WAS HE WORTH SAVING?*

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"I might try," squeaked a diminutive boy, whose
dark eyes had an unfortunate twist.

"Ye-s-s, Bartie," said his grandmother doubtfully,
looking out of the window upon the water wrinkled
by the rising wind.

"Wouldn't be much wuss," observed Bartholomew's
grandfather, leaning forward in his old red arm-chair
and steadily eying a failing fire as if arguing this
matter with the embers.  Then he added, "You could
take the small boat."

"Yes," said Bart eagerly.  "I could scull, you know;
and if the doctor wasn't there when I got there, I could
tell 'em you didn't feel well, and he might come when
he could."

"That will do, if he don't put it off too long,"
observed the old man, shaking his head at the fire as if
the two had now settled the matter between them.
"Yes, you might try."

Bartie now went out to try.  Very soon he wished
he had not made the trial.  Granny Trafton saw him
step into the small boat moored by the shore, and then
his wiry little arms began to work an oar in the stern
of the boat.  "Gran'sir Trafton," as he was called,
came also to the window, and looked out upon the
diminutive figure wriggling in the little boat.

"He will get back in an hour," observed Gran'sir
Trafton.

"Ought to be," said Granny Trafton.

It is a wonder that Bartie ever came back at all.
He was the very boy to meet with some kind of an
accident.  Somehow mishaps came to him readily.  If
any boy had a tumble, it was likely to be Bartie
Trafton.  If measles slyly stole into town to be caught by
somebody, Bartie Trafton was sure to be one catcher.
In a home that was cramped by poverty--his father
at sea the greater fraction of the time, and the other
fraction at home drunk--this under-sized, timid,
shrinking boy seemed as continually destined for
trouble as the Hudson for the sea.

"I don't amount to much," was an idea that
burdened his small brain, and the community agreed with
him.  If the public had seen him sculling Gran'sir
Trafton's small boat that day, it would have prophesied
ill before very long.  The public just then and there
upon the river was very limited in quantity.  It
consisted of two fishermen wearily pulling against tide a
boat-load of dried cod-fish, a boy fishing from a rock
that projected boldly and heavily into the water, and
several boys playing on the deck of an old schooner
which was anchored off the shore, and had been reached
by means of a raft.

The fishermen pulled wearily on.  The boys on the
schooner deck ran and shouted at their play.  The
young fisherman's line dangled down from the crown
of the big shore-rock.  The small sculler out in Gran'sir
Trafton's small boat busily worked his oar.  Bart did
not see a black spar-buoy thrusting its big arm out of
the water, held up as a kind of menace, in the very
course Bart was taking.  How could Bart see it?  His
face was turned up river, and the buoy was in the
very opposite quarter, not more than twenty feet from
the bow of the boat Bart was working forward with
all his small amount of muscle.  A person is not likely
to see through the back of his head.  Closer came the
boat to the buoy.  Did not its ugly black arm, amid
the green, swirling water, tremble as if making an
angry, violent threat?  Who was this small boy
invading the neighbourhood where the buoy reigned as if
an outstretched sceptre?  On sculled innocent
Bartholomew, the threatening arm shaking violently in his
very pathway, and suddenly--whack-k!  The boat
struck, threatened to upset, and did upset--Bart!  He
could swim.  After all the unlucky falls he had had
into the water, it would have been strange if he had
not learned something about this element; but he had
reached a place in the river where the out-going
current ran with strength, and took one not landward but
seaward.  How long could he keep above water--that
timid, shrinking face appealing for pity to every
spectator?  The boys on the deck of the old schooner soon
saw the empty dory floating past, and they now caught
also the cry for help from the pitiful face of the
panting swimmer--a cry that amid their loud play they
had not heard before.

"O Dick," said one of the younger boys, "there's a
fellow overboard, and there's his boat!  Quick!"

At this sharp warning every one looked up.  Then
they rushed to the schooner's rail and looked over.
Yes: there was the white face in the water; there
was the drifting boat.

The boy addressed as Dick was the leader of the
party.  His black, staring eyes, and his profusion of
black, curly hair, would have attracted attention
anywhere.  His eyes now sparkled anew, and he tossed
back his bushy curls, exclaiming,--

"Boys, to the rescue!  Attention!  Man the *Great
Emperor*."

"Throw this rope," was a suggestion made by
another boy, seizing a rope lying on the deck.  A rope
did not move Dick's imagination so powerfully as the
*Great Emperor*.  The rope was not nearly so daring
as the raft, though it would have given speedy and
sufficient help.

"To the rescue!" rang out Dick's voice.  "Not in a
rush!  Ho, there!  Orderly, men!"

Strutting forward with a blustering air, Dick led
his rescue-band to the *Great Emperor*, which at the
impulse of every rocking little wave thumped against
the schooner's hull.  The band of rescuers went down
upon the raft with more of a tumble than was
agreeable to Captain Dick of the *Great Emperor*.  Dick
concluded that there was too much of a crew to
dexterously manage the raft in the swift voyage that must
now be made.  Several would-be heroes were sent
back disappointed to the schooner, and they proceeded,
when too late, to cast the rope which had been
ignominiously spurned.  It splashed the water in vain.
Bartie tried to reach it; but it was like Tantalus in
the fable striving to pluck the grapes beyond his
grasp.

"Cast off!" Dick was now shouting excitedly,
pompously.  "Pull with a will for the shipwrecked
mariner!" was his second order.

This meant to use two poles in poling and paddling,
as might be more advantageous.

In the meantime the boy fisherman on the rock had
been operating energetically though quietly.  He had
seen the catastrophe, and had not ceased to watch the
little fellow who was struggling with the current
somewhere between the schooner and the shore.  Bartie
had aimed to reach the shore, and the distance was not
great; but just in this place the current ran with
swiftness and power, and the little fellow's strength was
failing him.  He had given several shrieks for help,
but it seemed as if he had been doing that thing all
through life; and as the world outside of gran'sir and
granny had not paid much attention to his appeals,
would the world do it now?  Bart had almost come
to the conclusion that it would be easier to sink than
to struggle, when he heard a noise in the water and
close at hand.  Was it the *Great Emperor*?  No; its
deck was still the scene of an impressive demonstration
of getting ready to do something.  The noise heard by
Bart had been made by the boy fisherman, who, stripping
off his jacket, kicking off his boots, and sending
his stockings after them, had thrown himself into the
water, and was making energetic headway toward
Bart.  It was good swimming--that of some one who
had both skill and strength on his side.

"Bartie!" he shouted.

What a world of hope opened before Bartie at the
sound of that voice!

"Here!  here!  Put your hands on my shoulders,
not round my neck, you know.  There! that is it.
Now swim.  We'll fetch her."

Fetch what?  It was a pretty difficult thing to
say definitely what that indefinite "her" might mean.
The current was still strong.  Bart's rescuer, if alone,
could have gained the shore again; but could he bring
the rescued?  Bart's face, pitiful and pale, projected
just above the water, and as his wet hair fell back
upon his forehead his countenance looked like that of
a half-drowned kitten.

A third party on the river, that of the fishermen in
their cod-laden boat moving slowly up river and
hugging the shore for the sake of help from the eddies,
had now become conscious that something was going on.

"What's that a-hollerin'?" asked one of the men,
Dan Eaton, reversing his head.

"Trouble enough!" exclaimed Bill Bagley, who had
also taken a look ahead.  "Pull, Bill!"

"Put for them two boys, Dan! one is a-helpin'
t'other."

The boat began to advance as if the dead cod-fish
had become live ones and were lending their strength
to the oarsmen.

"Good!" thought the rescuer in the water, who
saw between him and the far-off, level, misty sky-line
a boat and the backs of two fishermen.  "Hold on
there!" he said encouragingly to Bartie; "there's a
boat coming!"

The help did not arrive any too soon.  Bartie's hands
were resting lightly on his rescuer's shoulders, and he
was arguing if he could not throw his arms around
the neck of his beloved object, whether it might not be
well to relinquish his feeble, tired hold altogether, and
drop back into the soft, yielding depths of the water all
about him; such an easy bed to lie down in!  Life had
given him so many hard berths.  This seemed a relief.

"Ho, there you are!" shouted Dan, as the boat
came up.  He seized Bartie, while Bill Bagley gripped
the other boy, and both Bartie and his companion
were hauled into the boat, rather roughly, and
somewhat after the fashion of cod-fish, but effectually.

"Now, Dan, let us pull for that cove and land our
cargo!" said Bill.  "You boys can walk home?  We
have got to go to the other side and take our fish to
town."

"Oh yes," said the rescuer.

"I--I--can--walk!" exclaimed the shivering Bartie.

"Ah, youngster, you came pretty near not walking
ag'in if it hadn't been for t'other chap."

This made Bartie feel at first very sober, and then
he looked very grateful as he turned toward his
rescuers and said,--

"I--thank--you all.  I--I--I'll do as--much for
you--some time."

"Will ye?" replied Bill Bagley with a grin.  "Really,
I hope we shan't be in that fix where you'll have to."

"See there!" exclaimed Dan.  "There's the boat
adrift!"

The Trafton boat was leisurely floating down the
stream.  Bart had forgotten all about this craft.  A
frightened look shadowed his face.

"Don't you worry, Johnny!" said Bill Bagley kindly.
"We will land you, and then go a'ter your craft."

"But I promised gran'sir to go for the doctor."

"Dr. Peters?"

"Yes."

"Wall, Dan and I are goin' near the old man's, and
we'll send him over.--Won't we, Dan?"

"And I'll bring your boat up to your landing," said
his young rescuer to Bart.  "So you go right home
and get warm and don't worry."

A thankful look, like sunshine out of a dark cloud,
broke out of Bart's black eyes, and he shrank closer
to the sympathetic breast on which he leaned.

"I'll do as much for you," he whispered to the boy
fisherman.

"That's all right, Bartie," replied his rescuer.

"See here!" now inquired Dan.  "What are those
spoonies up to?  Where are they a-goin', I wonder,
on that raft?  To Afriky?"

"Guess that craft's got to be picked up too.  She's
a-makin' for the sea in spite of all their polin'," said Bill.

The *Great Emperor* was indeed moving seaward.
Captain Dick was frantically ordering his crew to
"pull her round;" but like sovereigns generally, the
*Great Emperor* had a mind of its own, and would not
be "pulled round."  Deliberately the raft was making
headway for the open sea, and possibly "Afriky."  It
might be a conspiracy on the part of wind and
tide to aid in this wilful attempt of the raft; but if
a conspiracy, it was no secret.  The tide was openly
pressing against the raft with its broad blue shoulders,
and the wind openly blew against the boys, as if they
were so much canvas spread for its filling.

"What you up to, fellers?" shouted Dick to Dab
and John Richards, who managed one of the poles.
"Bring her round and head her for the shore!"

"We can't," said John pettishly.

"Can't!" replied Dick in scorn.  "Why can't you?
Tell me!  Then we will spend the night on the
sea.--  You pull, Jimmy."

"Can't!" said Jimmy Davis nervously.  "She--she--won't
turn--and--"

Here his pole slipped out of its hole and down he
tumbled on the raft, his pole falling into the water.

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   :alt: "Down he tumbled on the raft, his pole falling into the water."

   "Down he tumbled on the raft, his pole falling into the water."  *Page 16*

"Oh dear!" shrieked Dick.  "What a set!  There
goes that oar!  Reach after it, Dab!"

Dab already was beating the water furiously with
his pole in his efforts to reach that "oar" now adrift.
It was all in vain.  The conspiracy to take them all
to sea and there let them spend the chilly night had
spread to the very equipments of the *Great Emperor*.

"Catch me on a raft ag'in!" whimpered John
Richards.

"Catch me on one with you!" replied Dick fiercely.
"Might have got that boy if you had pulled, and now
those other folks have got him."

"'Those other folks' are coming after us!" observed
Dab Richards.

"Oh dear!" groaned the humiliated Dick.  "Make
believe pull up river."

"I won't!" said John Richards.

"Pull so that they may think that we don't need
them.  Now!" urged Dick.

"I won't!" declared Dab.

Jimmy Davis also was going to say, "I won't;" but
he remembered that his pole was in the water, and
refrained.  He looked rebellious, though he said nothing.

There was now not only a conspiracy among the
elements, but a mutiny among the crew.  Dick sulked.

"Let her drift!" he said.  "I don't care!"

"She won't drift long!" remarked Dab sarcastically.
"The *Great Emperor*, that started to pick up
somebody, is now going to be picked up by somebody."

Yes, the fishermen were pulling out from the shore.
They picked up the boat, attached it to their own
craft, and then laboriously rowed for the vessel in the
hands of conspirators without and mutineers within.

"Where you chaps bound?" shouted Dan.

"Bound for the bottom of the sea," said Dick
grimly.

"We'll stave that off," said Bill.  "Here, take this
rope!  Now, we must try to git you ashore."

It was rather a queer tug-boat that did the
towing---a fisherman's dory in which, sandwich fashion,
alternated piles of codfish and oarsmen rowing; Bill,
Dan, and Bart's rescuer.  It was a singular fleet also
that was towed ashore--the *Great Emperor* and
Gran'sir Trafton's boat.

"Who is that boy rowing with those fishermen?"
wondered Dick.  "Can it be--"

Then he concluded it could not be.

Again he guessed.  "Must be--"

Then he declared it was somebody else.

Finally, when this strange fleet had been beached,
Dick shouted out, "That you, Dave Fletcher?"

"Nobody else," answered Bart's rescuer, advancing.
"I have been nodding to you, but I guess you didn't
know who it was; and I don't wonder--the way I
look after my bath.  Haven't got on the whole of my
rig yet.  How is Dick Pray?"

The two shook hands warmly.

"I haven't seen you for some time, Dave.  I have
been from home a while, going to school and so on.
I am stopping at my cousin's, Sam Whittles, just now."

"And I have been here only a few days, visiting
at my uncle's, Ferguson Berry."

"All right.  We will see each other again then.
I'll leave the old raft here and come for it when the
tide is going up river."

"And I am going to get the doctor.  Oh no, come
to think of it, these men will get him for that little
fellow's folks--the one we picked up, you know."

"We?  You, rather.  You did first-rate.  Well,
who was that little shaver?"

"I heard somebody call him Bartie.  That's for
Bartholomew, I guess."

"Oh, it's 'Mew,'" explained Dab.  "Bartholo*mew*;
and they say 'Mew' for short--'Little Mew.'"

"His face looked like a kitten's there in the water,"
said Dick, "and he mewed pitifully.  I've heard of
him.  Sort of a slim thing.  Well, may sound sort
of heartless, but I guess some folks would say he is
hardly worth the saving.  Oh, you're off, are you?"

"Yes," said one of the two fishermen who were
now pushing their boat off from shore.  "We must
get to town with our fish as soon as we can."

"Well, friends, I am much obliged to you," said
Dick Pray.

"So am I! so am I!" said several others.

"Count me in too," exclaimed Dave Fletcher.
"Might not have been here without you.--Give 'em
three cheers, boys!"

Amid the huzzahs echoing over the waters, the
fishermen, smiling and bowing, rowed off.

"Many thanks, boys, if you will help me to turn
Bart's boat over and get the water out.  I must row
it up to the rock where the rest of my clothes are,
and then we might all go along together.  We can
pick up the fellows on the schooner."

The remnant of Captain Dick's crew on board the
schooner gladly abandoned it when Gran'sir Trafton's
boat came along, and all journeyed in company up
the river.

And where was Little Mew?  He went home only
to be scolded by gran'sir because he had not brought
the doctor, and because he had somehow got into the
water somewhere.  Granny was not at home, and Little
Mew dared not tell the whole story.  He was sent
upstairs to change his clothes and stay there till granny
got home.

"Gran'sir don't know I haven't got another shift,"
whined Little Mew.  "Got to get these wet things off,
anyhow."

He removed them and then crept into bed.  It was
dark when granny returned.

From the window at the head of his bed Bartie
watched the sun go down, and then he saw the white
stars come into the sky.

About that time the evening breeze began to breathe
heavily; and was that the reason why the stars, blossom-like,
opened their fair, delicate petals, even as they
say the wind-flowers of spring open when the wind
begins to blow?

"They don't seem to amount to much--just like
me," thought Bartie; and having thus come into
harmony with the world's opinion of himself, he closed
his eyes, like an anemone shutting its petals, and
went to sleep.

Don't stars amount to much?  They would be
missed if, some night, people looking up should learn
that they had gone for ever.

And granny coming home, having learned elsewhere
the full story of Little Mew's exposure to an
awful peril, went upstairs, and, candle in hand, looked
down on the motherless child in bed fast asleep.

"Poor little boy!" she murmured.  "I should miss
him if he was gone.  Yes, I should terribly."

She wiped her eyes, and then tucked up Bartie for
the night.





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.. _`CAUGHT ON THE BAR`:

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   \II.

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   *CAUGHT ON THE BAR.*

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Dave Fletcher and Dick Pray were boys who
had grown up in the same town, but from the
same soil had come two very different productions.
They were unlike in their personal appearance.  Dick
Pray would come down the street throwing his head
to right and left, scattering sharp, eager glances from
his restless black eyes, and swinging his hands.

"Somebody is coming," people would be very likely
to say.

Dave Fletcher had a quiet, unobtrusive, straight-forward
way of walking.  Dick was quite a handsome
youth; but the person that Dave Fletcher saw in the
glass was ordinary in feature, with pleasant, honest
eyes of blue, and hair--was it brown or black?

Dave sometimes wished it were browner or blacker,
and not "a go-between," as he had told his mother.

Dave and Dick were not as yet trying to make
their own way; but they were between fifteen and
sixteen, and knew that they must soon be stirring for
themselves.

They had already begun to intimate how they
would stir in after life.

Dave had a quiet, resolute way.  There was no
pretence or bluster in his methods.  In a modest but
manly fashion he went ahead and did the thing while
Dick was talking about it, and perhaps magnifying
its difficulty, that inferentially his courage and pluck
in attempting it might be magnified.  Dick's way of
strutting down-street illustrated his methods and
manners.  There was a great deal of bluster in him.
Nobody was more daring than he in his purposes, but
for the quiet doing of the thing that Dick dared, Dave
was the boy.  Somehow Dick had received the idea
that the world is to be carried by a display of strength
rather than its actual use; that men must be
impressed by brag and noise.  Thus overpowered by
a sensational manifestation they would be plastic to
your hands, whatever you might wish to mould them
into.  Dick did not hesitate to attack any fort, scale
any mountain, or cross any sea--with his tongue.
When it came to the using of some other kind of
motive power--legs for instance--he might be readily
outstripped by another.  Among the boys at Shipton
he had made quite a stir at first.  His bluster and
brag made a sensation, until the boys began to find
out that it was often wind and not substance in
Dick's bragging; and they were now estimating him
at his true value.  Dave Fletcher was little known
to any of them save small Bartholomew Trafton;
but Dave's modest, efficient style of action they had
seen in the saving of Little Mew, and they were
destined to witness it in another impending catastrophe.

"Uncle Ferguson, who owns that old schooner off
in the river?" asked Dave one day, as he was eating
his way through a generous pile of Aunt Nancy's
fritters.  It was the craft to which had been tied the
*Great Emperor*.

"Why, David?"

"Because some of us boys want to go there and
stay a night or two.  We take our provisions with
us, and each one a couple of blankets, and so on, and
we can be as comfortable on the schooner as can be.
Would you and Aunt Nancy mind if we went?"

"Mind if you went?  No; I don't know as I do.--What
do you say, Nancy?"

Uncle Ferguson was a middle-aged man, with
ruddy complexion and two blue eyes that almost
shut and then twinkled like stars when he looked
at you.

Aunt Nancy was a plain, sober woman, with sharp,
thin features, and bleached eyes of blue.

"Don't know as I mind," declared Aunt Nancy.
"If you don't git into the water and drown, you
know."

"Oh, that's all right," said the nephew.

"Only you must see the owner of the schooner,"
advised the uncle.

"The owner?"

"Yes; Squire Sylvester.  He is very particular
about anything he owns."

"Oh, I didn't know the thing had an owner," said
Dave, laughing.  "It seems to lie there in the stream
doing nothing.  The boys didn't say anything about
an owner."

"Squire Sylvester is very particular," asserted Uncle
Ferguson.  "He got his property hard, and looks
after it."

"Yes, he is very pertickerler," added Aunt Nancy.

"Well, we will see him by all means.  We boys--"

"Didn't think; that is it, David.  Now, when I
was a boy we always asked about things," said Uncle
Ferguson.

"Well, husband, boys is boys, in them days and
these days.  I remember your mother used to say her
five boys used to cut up and--"

"Well," replied Uncle Ferguson, rising from the
table, "this won't feed the cows; and I must be
a-goin'.  I would see Sylvester, David."

"All right, uncle."

Dave announced his intention to Dick half-an-hour
later.

"Well, go, if you want to.  We fellows were not
going to say anything to anybody.  Who would be
the wiser?  The thing lies in the river, knocking
around in the tide, and seems to say, 'Come and use
me, anybody that wants to.'"

"If we owned the schooner we would prefer to
have it asked for, if she was going to be turned into
a boarding-house for a day or two."

"I suppose it would be safer to ask.  If we didn't
ask, and the owner should come down the river sailing
and see us, wouldn't there be music?"

"We will save the music, Dick.  I will just ask him."

As Dave neared Squire Sylvester's office he could
see that individual through the window.  He was a
man about fifty years old, his features expressing
much force of character, his sharp brown eyes looking
very intently at any one with whom he might be
conversing.  Dave hesitated at the door a moment,
and then summoning courage he lifted the latch of the
office door and entered.

"Good-day, sir."

The squire nodded his head abruptly and then
sharply eyed the boy before him.

"We boys, sir--"

"Who are you?" asked the squire curtly.

"David Fletcher.  I am visiting at my uncle's,
Ferguson Berry."

"Humph!  Yes, I know him."

"We boys, sir, wanted to know if you would let
us--"

"What boys?"

"Oh, Jimmy Davis, John Richards--"

"I know those."

"Dick Pray---"

"Pray?"

"He is visiting his cousin, Samuel Whittles."

"Oh yes; I've seen him in the post-office.  Curly-haired
boy; struts as if he owned all Shipton."

"Just so."

"Well?"

"John Richards's brother--that is all.  We want
to know if you will let us stay out in the old schooner
for a while.  We will try to be particular and not
harm the vessel."

"How long shall you want to be gone?"

"Oh, two or three days and nights."

"Humph!  Well, you can't have any fire on board.
Got a boat?"

"Yes, sir."

"Of course, for you can't wade out to her.  Put it
out there on purpose so folks couldn't paddle and
wade out to her, such as tramps, you know.  Well, if
you have a boat you can cook on shore."

"Yes, sir."

"You may have a lantern at night.  No objection
to that."

"We will remember."

"All right, then."

"Oh, thank you!  Good-day, sir."

"Good-day."

The squire's sharp brown eyes followed Dave as he
went out of the door, and then watched him as he
tripped down the street laughing and whistling.

"Like all young chaps--full of fun.  Rather like
that boy."

Dave announced the result of the conference to
several boys anxiously waiting for him round the
corner.

"Got it?" asked Dick Pray.

"Yes; tell us what he said," inquired Dab Richards.

The boys pressed eagerly up to Dave, who announced
the successful issue of his application.  A
burden of painful anxiety dropped from each pair of
shoulders, and the boys separated to collect their
"traps," promising to meet at Long Wharf, where a
boat awaited them.  Did ever any craft make a
happier, more successful voyage, when the boat
received its load two hours later and was then pushed
off?

"Everything splendid, boys!" said Dick.  "Won't
we have a time while we are gone, and won't we
come back in triumph?"

The return!  How little any of the party anticipated
the kind of return that would end their adventure!

"There's the schooner!" shouted Dave.  "I can
read her name on the stern--*RELENTLESS*.  Letters
somewhat dim."

"She is anchored good," said Dab Richards.  "Got
her cable out."

"Anchor at the bottom of it, I suppose," conjectured
Jimmy Davis.

"We will find out, boys, won't we?  We will just
hoist her a bit, as the sailors say, and see what she
carries," said Dick, in a low tone.

"Nonsense!" said Dave.  "Sylvester has our word
for good behaviour."

"Oh, don't you worry!" said Dick, in a jesting
tone.  "Let's see!  Shall we make our boat fast
round there?  Where shall it be?"

The best mooring was found for the boat, and then
a ladder with hooks on one end was attached to the
vessel's rail, and up sprang the boys eagerly.

The *Relentless* was an old fishing-schooner.  She
had been stripped of her canvas, and portions of her
rigging had been removed.  There were the masts,
though, still to suggest those trips to distant
fishing-grounds, when the winds had filled the canvas and
sent the *Relentless* like an arrow shot from one
curving billow to another.  There was the galley, empty
now of its stove, and showing to any investigator only
a rusty pan in one corner; but the wind humming
round its bit of rusty funnel told a story of many a
savoury dish cooked for a hardy, hungry crew.  And
the little cabin, so still now, save when a hungry rat
softly scampered across its floor, had been a good
corner of retreat to many when heavy seas wet the
deck on stormy nights and sent the spray flying up
into the rigging.

The boys transferred their cargo of bedding and
eatables to the deck, and then scattered to ramble
through the cabin or descend into the dark, musty
hold.  They came together again, and lugged their
baggage into the cabin, save the dishes and eatables,
which were stowed away on shelves.

"This is just splendid, Dick!" declared Dave, leaning
over the vessel's rail.  "It is going to sea without
having the fuss of it."

"That's so, Dave.  You don't have any sea-sickness,
any blistering your hands with handling ropes, any
taking in sail--"

"Oh, it's huge, Dick.  Now you want to divide up
the work."

"Not going to have any; all going to have a good
time."

"But who's going to cook, and bring water, and--"

"Oh, I see!  Forgot that."

A division of work was finally pronounced sensible.
Dave became "cook," Jimmy Davis was elected
"water-boy," Dick took charge of the sleeping
arrangements, and the brothers Richards were
constituted table-waiters and dish-washers--"without pay,"
Dave prudently added.  All that day, up to twilight,
life in the old fishing-schooner was smooth and happy
as the music of a marriage-bell.  Dave's cooking was
adjudged "splendid," and between meals there were
spells of story-telling, of games like hide-and-seek
about the ancient hull, and of fishing from the deck,
though there sometimes seemed to be more fishermen
than fish.

At twilight most of the boys were seated in the
stern of the vessel, looking out to sea and watching
the light fade out of the heavens and the warm
sunset glow steal away from the waters.

"There's the light starting up in the lighthouse
near the bar," said Dab Richards.

Yes, Toby Tolman, keeper of the light at the
harbour's mouth, and not far from a dangerous bar, ever
changing and yet never going, had kindled a star in
the tall lantern as the western clouds dropped their
gay extinguisher on the sun's dwindling candle.
Between the boys and the outside, dusky surface of ocean
water stretched a line of whitest foam, where the
waves broke on the bar.

"Getting chilly," said Dave.  "Hadn't we better
go into the cabin and light our lantern?"

"Guess Dick is looking after that," said Jimmy.

No; Dick was looking after--meddling, rather,
with something else.  He had whispered to John
Richards, "Come here, John," and then led him to
the bow of the vessel.

"See here, Johnny."

"What is it, Dick?"

"Wouldn't it be nice to see this old ark move?"

"Move! what for?"

"Oh, I've got tired of seeing it in one place."

"Why, what do you mean?  How?"

"Why, just have it go on a little voyage, you
know."

"Voyage?"

"You booby, can't you understand?"

"Understand?  No," replied John good-naturedly.
"Don't see how we can have a voyage without sails,
and the masts are bare as bean-poles when there ain't
any beans on 'em."

"Oh, you're thick-headed.  Don't you see this
anchor?"

"Don't see any.  I suppose there is one
somewhere--covered up, you know, down on the bed of the
river."

"Only water covers it, and it could be raised, and
we could have a sail without any sails."

"Come on!" said John, who was the very boy for
any kind of an adventure.  "But," he prudently
added, "how could we stop?"

"Drop the anchor again.  Why, we could stop
any time."

"So we could."

"We could sail, say a hundred feet to-night--tide
would drift us down--and then we could drop anchor;
and to-morrow, when the tide ran up river, we could
sail back again and drop anchor, just where we were
before."

"We could keep a-going, couldn't we, Dickie?"

"Certainly.  I don't know but we could go quarter
of a mile and then back again.  We should have, of
course, to go with the tide; but the anchor would
regulate us."

"So we could.  Just the thing.  Let's try it.
Shall I tell the fellers?"

"No; let's surprise 'em."

"But they'll hear us."

"No; they are quarrelling about something, and
they won't notice anything we do here."

"But how can you manage the anchor?"

"Raise it."

"But how raise it?"

"Johnny, I believe you have lost your mind since
coming here.  What is this I have got my hand on?"

"The capstan."

Dick here laid his hand on a battered old capstan,
around which how many hardy seamen had tramped
singing "Reuben Ranzo" or some other roaring song
of the sea.

"Don't you know how this works?"

"Not exactly."

"I will tell you.  You see this bar?"

Dick with his foot kicked a battered but stout
bar lying at the foot of the capstan.

"There! one end of the cable to which the anchor
is hitched goes round this capstan, you see.  Now, if
I stick this bar into that hole in the capstan and
shove her round--I mean the bar--the capstan will
go round too, and that will wind up that cable and
draw on the anchor.  Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see."

"Well, now we are ready.  I will sing something
like real sailors."

"The boys will hear us."

"No: they are fighting away; they won't notice."

It was a tongue-fight, but that may be as
absorbing as a fist-fight.

"You know 'Reuben Ranzo'?"

"Yes."

"Well, sing in a whisper and pull."

The bar was inserted into the capstan, and the
boys, as they shoved on the bar, sang softly,--

   |   "O poor Reuben Ranzo!
   |   Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!"
   |

"That's the chorus, Johnny.  Sing the other part.
Shove hard but sing easy."

   |   "Oh, Reuben was no sailor.
   |   *Chorus*--O poor Reuben Ranzo!
   |   Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
   |   O poor Reuben Ranzo!
   |   Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!"
   |

"Sing another verse, Johnny.  That shove just
took up the slack-line, and the next will pull on the
anchor.  Hun-now, Johnny!  You're a real good
sailor.  Sing easy, but shove."

   |   "He shipped on board of a whaler.
   |   *Chorus*--O poor Reuben Ranzo!
   |   Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
   |   O poor Reuben Ranzo!
   |   Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!"
   |

The last tug at the bar came hard, but the boys took
it as an encouraging sign that the anchor too was
coming.  They were not mistaken.  Another minute,
and Johnny eagerly exclaimed,--

"Dick, I do believe she's going!"

"Good!  That's so.  I knew 'Reuben Ranzo'
would bring her."

Yes, the *Relentless* had relented before the
fascinating persuasion of "Reuben Ranzo," and without
a murmur of resistance was softly slipping through
the dark sea water.

"Can you stop her any time, Dick?" asked Johnny
in tones a bit alarmed.

"Easy.  Just let the anchor slip back again, you
know."

"Shan't we tell the boys?"

"Wait a moment.  We want to surprise 'em.
They'll find it out pretty soon."

The boys at the stern had been discussing a subject
so eagerly that every one had lost his temper, and
when that is lost it may not be found again in a
moment.  It was like starting the *Relentless*--a thing
quite easily done; but as for stopping her--however, I
will not anticipate.  The boys were quarrelling about
a light on shore, and wondering why that illumination
was started so early, when it did not seem dark
enough for a home light.  In the course of the
discussion a second light, not far from the first, came
into view.  Over this the controversy waxed hotter
than ever, and led to much being said of which all
felt heartily ashamed.

No one heard the creak of the capstan-bar at the
bow or the devoted wooing of the *Relentless* by the
fascinating "Reuben Ranzo."

"That's funny," said Dave, after a while.  "One
of those lights has gone.  They have been approaching
one another, I have noticed.  Look here, fellers:
I believe this old elephant is moving!"

"She is," exclaimed Jimmy Davis.

They all turned and looked toward the bow.  The
figures there were growing dim in the thickening
twilight, but they could see Dick and Johnny waving
their hats, and of course they could plainly hear them
shout, "Hurrah! hurrah!"

"What's the matter?" cried Dave, rushing across
the deck.

"Having a sail," said Dick.

"And without a sail too," cried Johnny triumphantly.

"What do you mean?" asked Dab.

"Why, we just hoisted the anchor, and the tide is
taking us along," replied Dick.  The party at the
stern did not know how to take this announcement.

"But," said Dave, advancing toward the capstan,
and remembering his promise to Squire Sylvester
that he would be "particular," "we are adrift, man!"

"Oh, we can stop any time--just drop the anchor--and
the next tide will drift us back where we
were before."

"Y-e-s," said Dave, but reluctantly, "if we don't get
in water too deep for our anchor.  I like fun, Dick,
but--"

"Oh, well," replied Dick angrily, "we will stop
her now if you think we need to be so fussy.--Just
let her go, Johnny."

Johnny, however, did not understand how to "let
her go."  It seemed to him and the others as if "she"
were already going.

"Oh, well, I can show you, if you all are ignorant,"
said Dick confidently.  "Just shove on this bar--help,
won't you?--and then knock up that ratchet
that keeps the capstan from slipping back--there!"

The weight of the anchor now drew on the capstan,
and round it spun, creaking and groaning, liberating
all the cable that had been wound upon it; but when
every inch of cable had been paid out, what then?

"There!  The anchor must be on bottom, and she
holds!" shouted Dick in triumph.

"No--she--don't," replied Dab.  "We are in deep
water, and adrift."

"Can't be," asserted Dick.  "All that cable paid
out!"

Dick leaned over the vessel's rail and tried to pierce
the shadows on the water and see if he could detect
any movement.  "Don't--see--anything that looks
like moving, boys.  Surely the anchor holds her," he
said, in a very subdued way.

"Dick, see that rock on the shore?" asked Dave.

A ledge, big, shadowy, could be made out.

"Now, boys, keep your eyes on that two or three
minutes and see if we stay abreast of it," was Dave's
proposed test.

Five pairs of eyes were strained, watching the
ledge; but if there had been five hundred, they would
not have seen any proof that the vessel was stationary.

The ledge was stationary, but the *Relentless*--

"Well," said Dick, scratching his head, "I don't
think we need worry.  We--we--"

"Can drift," said Dab scornfully.

"It is of no use to cry over spilled milk," said Dave,
in a tone meant to assure others.  "Let's make the
best of it, now it's done, and get some fun out of it if
we can.  All aboard for--Patagonia!"

"Good for you," whispered Dick.  "The others are
chicken-hearted.  We shall come out of it all right;
though I wish the schooner's rudder worked, and we
might steer her."

The rudder was damaged and would not work.

"Say, boys, we might tow her into shallow water!"
suggested Dave.  "Come on, come on!  Let's have
some fun.  And see--there's the moon!"

Yes, there was a moon rising above the eastern
waters, shooting a long, tremulous arrow of light
across the sea.  The boys' spirits rose with the moon,
and as the light strengthened, their surroundings--the
harbour, the lighthouse near the bar, the shores on
either hand--were not so indistinct.

"Not so bad," said Dick in a low tone to Dab.
"There's our boat, you know.  We can get into that
and let this old wreck go.  We can get ashore.  We
will have a lot of fun out of this."

The situation was delightful, as Dick continued to
paint its attractions.  They could have a "lot of fun"
out of the schooner, and at the same time abandon
the source of it when that failed them.  Dave talked
differently.

"Come, boys, we must try to get the old hulk
ashore," he said.  "I believe in staying by this piece
of property long as we got permission to use it; but
we will make the best of our situation.  All hands
into the boat to tow the schooner into shallow
water!"

The boys responded with a happy shout, and
climbed over the vessel's side, descending by the
ladder that still clung to the rail.

"What have we got to tow with?" asked Jimmy Davis.

"That is a conundrum!" replied Dave.  "Didn't
think of that!"

"May find something on the deck," suggested Dick.

A hunt was made, but no rope could be found.

"Boys, we have got to tow with the boat's painter;
it's all we have got," said Dave, in a disgusted tone.
This rope was about ten feet long.  It was attached
to the schooner's bow, and how those small arms did
strain on the oars and strive to coax the *Relentless*
into shoal water!

"Give us a sailor's song, Dick," said Jimmy Davis.

"I will, boys, when I get my breath," replied Dick,
puffing after his late efforts and wiping the sweat
from his brow.  "I'll start 'Reuben Ranzo.'"

The boys sang with a will, and their voices made a
fine chorus.

"Reuben" had been able to coax the schooner
away from her moorings, but he could not win her
back.

True to her name, she obstinately drifted on.

"Don't you know anything else?" inquired Dave.

"I know 'Haul the Bow-line.'"

"Give us that, Dick."

"I'll start you on the words, boys,--

   |   'Haul the bow-line, Kitty is my darling;
   |   Haul the bow-line, the bow-line haul.'

Sing and pull, boys."

The boys sang and the boys pulled, and there was
a fierce straining on that bow-line; but no soft words
about "Kitty" had any effect on the *Relentless*.  It
seemed as if this obdurate creature were moved by an
ugly jealousy of "Kitty," and drifted on and on.

"It's of no use!" declared Dick.  "I move we
untie our rope and go ashore and let the old thing go.
We have done what we could to get ashore."

He did not say that he had done what he could to
get the *Relentless* adrift, and had fully succeeded.
Dave did not twit him with the fact, but he was not
ready to abandon the schooner.

Some of the boys murmured regrets about their
"things."  They did not want to forsake these.

"Well, boys," said Dick, with a boastful air, "I'll
get you out of the scrape somehow.  We might go
on deck again, and hold a council of war and talk the
situation over."

Any change was welcomed, and the boys scrambled
on deck again.  Dick was the last of the climbing
column.

"Hand that painter up here and I'll make it fast,"
said Dave.  "Then come up and we will talk
matters over."

"Oh!" said Dick, who was half-way up the
ladder, "I forgot to bring that rope up."

He descended the ladder and reached out his foot
to touch the boat, but he could not find it!  When
he had left the boat, a minute ago, he gave it
unintentionally a parting kick, and--and--alas!  The
boat was now too far from the schooner's side to be
reached by Dick's foot.

"Get something!" he gasped.  "Bring a--pole--and--get
that boat!"

The boys scattered in every direction to find a--they
did not know what, that in some way they
might reach after and capture that escaping boat.
Their excitement was intense but fruitless.  There
were now two vessels adrift--a schooner and a
dory--serenely floating in the still but strong current,
steadily moving seaward, and the moonlight that had
been welcomed only revealed to them more plainly
the mortifying situation of the party.

"Ridiculous!" exclaimed Dick.

Most of the boys looked very sober.  Dave put his
hands in his pockets and whistled.

"Well, boys, don't you worry!  I'll get you out of
this in good fashion yet," cried Dick.  "We can't go
far to sea, and then the tide will bring us back again
in the morning."

"Far to sea!" said Dab mockingly.  "There's the
lighthouse on the left, and it looks to me as if we
should hit the bar!"

The bar!  The boys started.  At the mouth of the
river the sand brought down from the yielding shores
would accumulate, and it formed a bar whose size and
shape would annually change, but the obstacle itself
never disappeared.  There it stretched in the
navigator's way, seriously narrowing the channel; and of
how many catastrophes that "bar" had been the
occasion!  The breakers above were soft and white,
and the sand below was yielding and crumbling; and
yet just there how many vessels had been tripped up
by that foot of sand thrust out into the harbour!
The boys laughed and tried to be jolly, but no one
liked the situation.  It was a very picturesque
scene,--the moonlight silvering the sea, the calmly-moving
schooner and boat, that lighthouse like a tall, stately
candlestick lifting its quiet light; but, for all that,
there was the bar!  Either the night-wind was
growing very chilly, or the boys shivered for another
reason.

"Don't worry, fellows," said Dick, putting as much
courage as possible into his voice.  "When this old
thing hits, you see, we shan't drift right on to the
bar, but our anchor will catch somewhere on this side.
That will hold us.  I can swim, and I'll just drop
into the sea and make for the light and get Toby
Tolman's boat, and come and bring you off."

He then proceeded to hum "Reuben Ranzo;" but
nobody liked to sing it, and Dick executed a solo for
this unappreciative audience.

"How--how deep is the water inside the bar?"
said chattering Jimmy Davis.  He felt the cold
night-air, and he shook as if he had an ague fit.

"Pretty deep," solemnly remarked Dab Richards.

The musical hum by the famous soloist, Dick
Pray, ceased; only the breakers on the bar made
their music.

Dick began to doubt seriously the advisability of
dropping into that deep gulf reputed to be inside the
bar.  It was now not very far to the lighthouse, and
the surf on the bar whitened in the moonlight and
fell in a hushed, drowsy monotone.  People by the
shore may be hushed by this lullaby of the ocean, but
to those boys there was nothing drowsy in its sound;
it was very startling.

"I--I--I--" said Jimmy.

"What is it, Jimmy?" asked Dave.

Jimmy did feel like wishing aloud that he could be
at home, but he concluded to say nothing about it.
Steadily did the *Relentless* drift toward that snow-line
in the dark sea.

"Almost there!" cried Dave.

"May strike any moment!" shouted Dab.

Yes, nearer, nearer, nearer, came the *Relentless* to
that foaming bar.  The boat had already arrived
there, and Dave saw it resting quietly on its sandy
bed.  Did he notice a glistening strip of sand beyond
the surf?  He had heard some one in Shipton say
that at very low tide there was no water on portions
of the bar.  This fact set him to thinking about his
possible action.  It now seemed to him as if the
distance between the stern of the vessel and the bar
could not be more than a hundred feet.  The bow of
the vessel pointed up river.  She was going "stern
on."  How would it strike--forcibly, easily?

.. figure:: images/img-034.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Nearer and nearer came the '*Relentless*' to that foaming bar."

   "Nearer and nearer came the '*Relentless*' to that foaming bar."  *Page 43*]

"Ninety feet now!" thought Dave.  "Will the
shock upset her, pitch us out, or what?"

Sixty feet now!

"The bar looks sort of ugly!" remarked Johnny
Richards.

Thirty feet now!

"Wish I was in bed!" thought Jimmy Davis.

Twenty feet now!

Had the schooner halted?  The boys clustered in
the bow and looked anxiously over to the bar.

"Boys, she holds, I do believe," said Dave.

"All right!" shouted Dick--"all right!  The
anchor holds!"

It did seem an innocent, all-right situation: just
the quiet sea, the musically-rolling surf along the bar,
the stately lighthouse at the left, and that schooner
quietly halting in the harbour.

"Now, boys," exclaimed Dick, "we can--"

"I thought you were going to swim to the lighthouse?"
observed Dab.

"Oh, that won't be necessary now," replied Dick.
"We are just masters of the situation.  The moment
the tide turns we can weigh anchor and drift back
again just as easy!  Be in our old quarters by
morning, and nobody know the difference.  Old Sylvester
himself might come down the river, and he would find
everything all right.  Ha! ha!"

Dick's confidence was contagious, and when he
proposed "Haul the Bow-line," his companions sang
with him, and sang with a will.  How the notes
echoed over the sea!  Such a queer place to be singing in!

"Mr. Toby Tolman," said Dick, facing the lighthouse,
"we propose to wake you up!  Let him have
a rouser.  Give him 'Reuben Ranzo!'"

While they were administering a "rouser" to
Mr. Toby Tolman, somebody at the stern was dropping
into the sea.  He had stripped himself for his swim,
and now struck out boldly for the bar.  Reaching its
uncovered sands he ran along to the boat, lying on
the channel side of the bar and not that of the
lighthouse, leaped into the boat, and, shoving off, rowed
round to the bow of the schooner.  There was a pause
in the singing, and Dick Pray was saying, "This place
makes you think of mermen," when Dab Richards,
looking over the vessel's side, said, "Ugh! if there
isn't one now!"

"Where--where?" asked Johnny.

"Ship ahoy!" shouted Dave from the boat.  "How
many days out?  Where you bound?  Short of provisions?"

"Three cheers for this shipwrecked mariner just
arrived!" cried Dab.  And the hurrahs went up
triumphantly in the moonlight.  Dave threw up to
the boys the much-desired painter, and the runaway
boat was securely fastened.

"There, Dave!" said Dick, as he welcomed on deck
the merman: "I was just going after that thing
myself, just thinking of jumping into the water, but you
got ahead of me.  Somehow, I hate to leave this old
craft."

"I expect," said Dab Richards, a boy with short,
stubby black hair and blue eyes, and lips that easily
twisted in scorn, "we shall have such hard work to
get Dick away from this concern that we shall have
to bring a police-officer, arrest, and lug him off that
way."

"Shouldn't wonder," replied Dick.  "Couldn't be
persuaded to abandon this dear old tub."

"Well, boys, I'm going to the lighthouse as soon as
I'm dressed," said Dave.

There was a hubbub of inquiries and comments.

"What for?" asked Dick.  "Ain't we all right?"

"I hope so; but I want to keep all right.  I want
to ask the light-keeper--"

"But all we have got to do is to pull up anchor
when the tide comes, and drift back."

"Oh yes; we can drift back, but where?  We can't
steer the schooner.  We don't know what currents
may lay hold of her and take her where we don't
want to go.  There are some rocks with an ugly name."

"'Sharks' Fins!'" said Jimmy.  "Booh!"

"What if we ran on to them?" said Dave.  "We
had better go and ask Toby Tolman's opinion.  He
may suggest something--tell us of some good way to
get out of this scrape.  He knows the harbour, the
currents, the tides, and so on.  Any way, it won't do
any harm to speak to him.  I won't bother anybody
to go with me.  Stay here and make yourselves
comfortable; I will dress and shove off."

When Dave had dressed and returned, he found
every boy in the boat.  Dick Pray was the first that
had entered.

"Hullo!" shouted Dave.  "All here, are you?
That's good.  The more the merrier."

"Dave, we loved you so much we couldn't leave
you," asserted Dick.

"We will have a good time," said Dave.  "All
ready!  Shove off!  Bound for the lighthouse!"

The old schooner was left to its own reflections
in the sober moonlight, and the boat slowly crept
over the quiet waters to the tall lighthouse tower.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DID THE SCHOONER COME BACK?`:

.. class:: center large

   \III.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *DID THE SCHOONER COME BACK?*

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Toby Tolman sat in the snug little
kitchen of the lighthouse tower.  He was
alone, but the clock ticked on the wall, and the kettle
purred contentedly on the stove.  Music and company
in those sounds.

The light-keeper had just visited the lantern, had
seen that the lamp was burning satisfactorily, had
looked out on the wide sea to detect, if possible, any
sign of fog, had "felt of the wind," as he termed it,
but did not discover any hint of rough weather.
Having pronounced all things satisfactory, he had
come down to the kitchen to read awhile in his Bible.
The gray-haired keeper loved his Bible.  It was a
companion to him when lonely, a pillow of rest when
his soul was weary with cares, a lamp of guidance
when he was uncertain about the way for his feet, a
high, strong rock of refuge when sorrows hunted his
soul.

"I just love my Bible," he said.

He had reason to say it.  What book can match it?

As he sat contentedly reading its beautiful promises,
he caught the sound of singing.

"Some fishermen going home," he said, and read
on.  After a while he heard the sound of a vigorous
pounding on the lighthouse door.

"Why, why!" he exclaimed in amazement, "what
is that?"

He rose and hastily descended the stair-way leading
to the entrance of the lighthouse.  To gain admission
to the lighthouse, one first passed through the
fog-signal tower.  The lighthouse proper was built of
stone; the other tower was of iron.  They rose side
by side.  A covered passage-way five feet long
connected the two towers, and entrance from the outside
was first through the fog-signal tower.  The foundation
of each tower was a stubborn ledge that the sea
would cover at high-water, and it was now necessary
to have all doors beyond the reach of the
roughly-grasping breakers.  Otherwise they would have
unpleasantly pressed for admittance, and might have
gained it.  The entrance to the fog-signal tower was
about twenty feet above the summit of the ledge, and
from the door dropped a ladder closely fastened to
the tower's red wall.  Around the door was a railed
platform of iron, and through a hole in the platform
a person stepped down upon the rounds of the ladder.
Toby Tolman seized a lantern, and crossing the
passage-way connecting the two towers, entered the
fog-signal tower, and so gained the entrance.  Just above
the threshold of the door he saw the head and
shoulders of a boy standing on the ladder.

"Why! who's this, at this time of night?" said Toby.

"Good-evening, sir.  Excuse me, but I wanted to
ask you something."

It was Dave Fletcher.

"Any trouble?"

"Well, yes."

"Come in, come in!  Don't be bashful.  Lighthouses
are for folks in trouble."

"Thank you."

When Dave had climbed into the tower Dick Fray's
curly head appeared.

"Oh, any more of you?" asked the keeper.  "Bring
him along."

"Good-evening," said Dick.

Then Jimmy Davis thrust up his head.

"Oh, another?" asked Toby.  "How many?"

"Not through yet, Mr. Tolman," said Dave, laughing.

Johnny Richards stuck up his grinning face above
the threshold.

"Any more?" said the light-keeper.

And this inquiry Dab Richards answered in person,
relieving the ladder of its last load.

"Why, why! wasn't expecting this!  All castaways?"

"Pretty near it, Mr. Tolman," said Dick.

"Come up into the kitchen, and then let us have
your story, boys."

They followed the light-keeper into the kitchen,
so warm, so cheerfully lighted.

In the boat Dick Pray had been very bold, and
said he would go ahead and "beard the lion in his
den;" but when at the foot of the lighthouse, he
concluded he would silently allow Dave to precede him.
The warmth of the kitchen thawed out Dick's tongue,
and now that he was inside he kept a part of his
word, and made an explanation to the light-keeper.
He stated that they had had permission to "picnic"
on the schooner, had--had--"got adrift"--somehow--and
were caught on the bar, and the question was
what to do.

"Perhaps you can advise us still further," explained
Dave.  "One suggestion is that when the tide turns
we pull up anchor and drift back with the tide."

"Anchor?" asked Mr. Toby Tolman.  "I thought
you went on because you couldn't help it.  Didn't
know you dropped anchor there."

Dick blushed and cleared his throat.

"The schooner was anchored, but," said Dick, choking
a little, "we--we--got--got--into water too deep
for our anchor, and kept on drifting till the anchor
caught in the bar."

"Oh!" said the light-keeper, who now saw a little
deeper into the mystery, though all was not clear to
him yet.  "What will you do now?  It is a good rule
generally, when you don't know which way to move,
not to move.  Now, if you pull up anchor and let the
next tide take you back, there is no telling where it
will take you.  Some bad rocks in our harbour as well
as a lot of sand.  'Sharks' Fins' you know about.
An ugly place.  Now let me think a moment."

The light-keeper in deep thought walked up and
down the floor, while the five boys clustered about the
stove like bees flocking to a flaming hollyhock.

"See here: I advise this.  Don't trouble that anchor
to-night.  The sea is quiet.  No harm will be done
the schooner, and her anchor has probably got a good
grip on some rocks down below, and the tide won't
start her.  A tug will bring down a new schooner
from Shipton to-morrow, and I will signal to the cap'n,
and you can get him to tow you back.  What say?"
asked the keeper.  "'Twill cost something."

"That plan looks sensible," said Dave.  "I will give
my share of the expense."

Dick looked down in silence.  He wanted to get
back without any exposure of his fault.  The tug
meant exposure, for the world outside would know it.
The tide as motive power, drifting the schooner back,
would tell no tales if the schooner went to the right
place.  There would, however, be danger of collision
with rocks, and then the bill of expense would be
greater and the exposure more mortifying.  He
scratched his head and hesitated, but finally assented
to the tug-boat plan, and so did the other boys.

"Very well, then," said the keeper, "make yourselves
at home, and I'll do all I can to make you comfortable."

What, stay there?  Did he mean it?  He meant a
night of comfort in the lighthouse.

What a night that was!

"I wouldn't have missed it for twenty pounds,"
Johnny Richards said to those at home.

And the breakfast!  It was without parallel.  The
schooner was held by its anchor inside the bar, and
the boys in the morning visited their provision-baskets,
and brought off such a heap of delicacies that the
light-keeper declared it to be the "most satisfyin' meal" he
had ever had inside those stone walls.

About nine o'clock he said, "Now, boys, I expect
the tug-boat will be down with that schooner.  When
the cap'n of the tug-boat has carried her through the
channel, I will signal to him--he and I have an
understanding about it--and he will come round and
tow you up, I don't doubt.  You might be a-watching
for her smoke."

Soon Dab Richards, looking up the harbour, cried
out, "Smoke! she's coming!"

Yes, there was the tug-boat, throwing up a column
of black smoke from her chimney, and behind her
were the freshly-painted hull, and new, clean rigging
of the lately launched schooner.  The boys, save Dave,
went to the *Relentless*, as the light-keeper said he
would fix everything with the tug-boat, "make a
bargain, and so on," and Dave could hear the terms and
accept them for the party if he wished.  The light-keeper
had also promised in his own boat to put Dave
aboard the tug.

But what other tug-boat was it the boys on the
*Relentless* saw steaming down the harbour?  They
stood in the bow and watched her approach.

"She looks as if she were going to run into us,"
declared Dick.

"She certainly is pointing this way," thought
Johnny.

"Our friends may be alarmed for us," was Dab's
suggestion.

This could not be, the other boys thought, and they
dismissed it as a teasing remark by Dab.  And yet
the tug-boat was coming toward them like an arrow
feathered with black smoke and shot out by a strong
arm.

"It is certainly coming toward us," cried Dick in
alarm.  Who was it his black eyes detected among
the people leaning over the rail of the nearing tug-boat?

He looked again.

He took a third look.

"Boys," he shouted, "put!"

How rapidly he rushed for a hatchway, descending
an old ladder still in place and leading into the
schooner's hold!  Fear is catching.  Had Dick seen
a policeman sent out in a special tug to hunt up the
boys and secure the vessel?  Johnny Richards flew
after Dick.  Jimmy Davis followed Johnny.  Dab
was quickly at the heels of Jimmy.  Down into the
dark, smelling hold, stumbling over the keelson, splashing
into the bilge water, and frightening the rats,
hurried the still more frightened boys.

"Who was it, Dick?" asked Dab.

"Keep still boys; don't say anything."

"Can't you tell his name?" whispered Johnny.

There it was, down in the dark, that Dick
whispered the fearful name.  When the tug-boat, the
*Leopard*, carrying Dave neared the schooner, the captain
said, "You have another tug there.  It is the *Panther*."

The *Leopard* hated the *Panther*, and would gladly
have clawed it out of shape and sunk it.

"I don't understand why the *Panther* is there," said
Dave; "I really don't know what it means."

"You see," said the master of the *Leopard* fiercely,
"if that other boat is a-goin' to do the job, let her do
it (he will probably cheat you).  I can't fool away my
time.  The *Sally Jane* is waitin' up stream to be towed
down, and I would like to get the job."

"We will soon find out what it means, sir.  Just
put me alongside the schooner."

"I will put my boat there, and you can jump out."

Who was it that Dave saw on the schooner's deck?
Dave trembled at the prospect.  He could imagine
what was coming, and it came.

"Here, young man, what have you been up to?  A
precious set of young rascals to be running off with
my property.  I thought you said you would be
particular.  The state prison is none too good for you,"
said this unexpected and gruff personage.

"Squire Sylvester," replied Dave with dignity, "just
wait before you condemn after that fashion; wait
till you get the facts.  I did try to be particular.  I
don't think it was intended when it was done; boys
don't think, you know--"

"When what was done?"

"Why, the anchor lifted--weighed--"

"Anchor lifted!" growled Squire Sylvester.  "What for?"

"Just to see it move, and have a little ride, I
think."

"Have a little sail!  Didn't you know, sir, it was
exposing property to have a little sail?"

Here the squire silently levelled a stout red
forefinger at this opprobrious wretch, this villain, this
thief, this robber on the high seas, this--with what
else did that finger mean to label David Fletcher?

"But the anchor was dropped again, and it was
thought, sir, that it--that it would stop--"

"And the vessel did not stop!  Might have guessed
that, I should say.  You got into deep water."

"We were going to hire the *Leopard* to tow it
back, and any damages would have been paid.  I am
very sorry--"

"No apologies, young man.  What's done is done.
I have got a tug-boat to take the vessel back."

"And you don't want me?" here shouted the
captain of the *Leopard*.

"Of course not," muttered the captain of the
*Panther*, showing some white teeth in derision.

"I don't know anything about you," said Squire
Sylvester to the captain of the *Leopard*; "this other
party may settle with you."

"I'll pay any bill," said Dave to the *Leopard*, whose
steam was escaping in a low growl.

"Can't waste any more time," snarled the *Leopard*.
He rang the signal-bell to the engineer, and off went
his tug.

"Well, where are your companions?" said Squire
Sylvester to Dave.--"O Giles," he added to the
*Panther*, "you may start up your boat if you have made
fast to the schooner."

"Weigh the anchor fust, sir."

"Oh yes, Giles."

The anchor weighed, the *Panther* then sneezed,
splashed, frothed, and the *Relentless* followed it.  Squire
Sylvester declared that he must find the other
runaways; that they must be on board the schooner, and
he would hunt for them.  He discovered them down in
the hold, and out of the shadows crawled four sheepish,
mortified hide-aways.

And so back to its moorings went the old schooner.

Back to his office went Squire Sylvester, mad with
others, and mad with himself because mad with others.

Back to their homes went a shabby picnic party,
and after them came a bill for the expense of the
*Relentless's* return trip.  It costs something in this life
to find out that the thing easily started may not be
the thing easily stopped.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT WAS HE HERE FOR?`:

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   \IV.

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.. class:: center medium

   *WHAT WAS HE HERE FOR?*

.. vspace:: 2

Bartie Trafton, *alias* Little Mew, was crouching
behind a clump of hollyhocks in a little
garden fronting the Trafton home.  It was a favourite
place of retreat when things went poorly with Little
Mew.  They had certainly gone unsatisfactorily one
day not long after the sail that was not a sail.  He
had perpetrated a blunder that had brought out from
Gran'sir Trafton the encouraging remark that he did
not see what the boy was in this world for.  Bartie
had retreated to the hollyhock clump to think the
situation over.  He was ten years old, and life did
have a hard look to Little Mew.  He never supposed
that his father cared much for him.  When the father
was ashore he was drunk; when he came to his
senses, and was sober, then he went to sea.  Bart
sometimes wondered if his mother thought of him
and knew how he was situated.

"She's up in heaven," thought Bart among the hollyhocks,
and to Bart heaven was somewhere among the
soft, white clouds, floating like the wings of big gulls
far above the tops of the elms that overhung the roof
of the house and looked down upon this poor little
unfortunate.  If earth brought so little happiness,
because bringing so little usefulness, then why was Bart
on the earth at all?

"I don't see," he murmured.

The question was a puzzle to him.  He was still
looking up when he heard the voice of somebody calling.

"It is somebody at the fence," he said.  It was a
musical voice, and Bart wondered if his mother wouldn't
call that way.  He turned; and what a sweet face he
saw at the fence!--a young lady with sparkling eyes of
hazel, fair complexion, and cheeks that prettily dimpled
when she laughed.  He surely thought it must be his
mother grown young and come back to earth again.
There was some difference between that face, so
picturesquely bordered with its summer hat, and the
puzzled, irregular features under the old, ragged straw
hat that Bart wore.

"Are you the little fellow I heard about that got
into the water one day?" asked the young lady.

"Yes'm," said Bart, pleased to be noticed because
he had been in the water, while thankful to be out
of it.

"Well, I'm getting up a Sunday-school class, and
I should like very much to have you in it.  Would
you like to come?"

"Yes'm," said Bart eagerly, "if--if granny and
gran'sir would let me."

"Where are they?  You let me ask them."

"She's got a lot of tunes in her voice," thought
Bart, eagerly leading the young lady into the
presence of granny and gran'sir.

They were in a flutter at the advent of so much
beauty and grace, and gave a ready permission.

"Now, Bartie--that is your name, I believe--"

"Yes'm."

"I shall expect you next Sunday down at that
brick church, Grace Church, just on the corner of
Front Street."

"I know where it is."

"And one thing more.  Do you suppose you could
get anybody else to come?" asked the young lady.

"I'll try."

"That's right.  Do so.  Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Bart was puzzled to know whom to solicit for the
Sunday school.  Gran'sir was so much interested in
the young lady that Bart concluded gran'sir would be
willing to go if asked and if well enough; but Bart
concluded that gran'sir was too old, and he said
nothing.  Sunday itself, on his way to the church,
Bart saw a recruit.  It was Dave Fletcher.

"Oh, you will go with me, won't you?  I haven't
anybody yet," he said eagerly.

"What do you mean?" replied the wondering Dave.

"Oh, go to Sunday school with me.  I said I
would try to bring some one."

Dave smiled, and Bart interpreted the smile as one
half of an assent.

"Oh, do go!  I said I would try.  And she's real
pretty."

"Who? your teacher?"

"Yes."

"Well, that is an inducement.  But I am only
going to be here a Sunday or two.  My visit is
almost over."

"Oh, well, it would please teacher."

Dave smiled again, and this Bart interpreted as
the other half of the assent desired.

"Oh, I am so glad!  I'll tell you where it is."

"W-e-l-l!  It won't do any harm.  I can go as
visitor, and I suppose it would please my family--"

"Family?"

"My father and mother and sister, if they should
know I had visited the Sunday school.  Come along!
We don't want to be late, you know.  I'll be visitor,
and perhaps they will want me to make a speech at
the school.  Ha! ha!"

Bart pulled Dave eagerly into the entry of the
church, and then looked through the open door into
the room where he knew the Sunday school met; for
Bart had been a visitor once in that very same place.

"Oh, I see teacher," thought Bart, spying his
friend in a seat not far from the door.  Her back
was turned toward him, but he had not forgotten the
pretty summer hat with its fluttering ribbons of blue.
Dave, with a smile, followed the little fellow, who was
timorously conveying his prize to the waiting young
lady.  She looked up as Bart exclaimed, "Here,
teacher!  I've got one."

.. figure:: images/img-066.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Here, teacher!  I've got a recruit.'"

   "'Here, teacher!  I've got a recruit.'"  *Page 63.*

"Why, Dave," she exclaimed, "where did you come
from?"

"Annie--this you?" he said.  The two began to
laugh.  Bart in surprise looked at them.

"This is my sister, Bart," explained Dave.  "Ha! ha!"

That beautiful young lady and the big boy who
had saved him sister and brother?  He might have
guessed such a friend as Dave would have such a
sister as this nice young lady.  She was visiting at
Uncle Ferguson's.

"You see, Dave, when I began my visit I did not
expect to teach while here; but I met the minister,
Mr. Porter, and he said he wished I would start
another class for him in his Sunday school and teach
it while here, and I could not say no; and went to
work, and have been picking up my class.  I didn't
happen to tell you."

The Rev. Charles Porter, at this time the
clergyman at Grace Church, was an old friend of the
Fletcher family.  Meeting Annie in the streets of
Shipton, and knowing what valuable material there
was in the young lady, he desired to set her to work
at once; and when her stay in town might be over,
he could, as he said, "find a teacher, somebody to
continue to open the furrow that she had started."

Dave enjoyed the situation.

"I will play that I am superintendent, Annie, and
have come to inspect your class, and will sit here
while you teach."

"I don't know about allowing you to stay here,
sir, unless you become a member of the class and
answer my questions, Dave."

Annie was relieved of the presence of this inspector;
for a gentleman at the head of a class opposite,
noticing a big boy among Annie's flock of little
fellows, kindly invited Dave to sit with his older lads.

"I am Mr. Tolman," said the gentleman.  "Make
yourself at home among the boys."

"Thank you, sir," said Dave; and his sister, with
a roguish smile, bowed him out of her class.

That Sunday was an eventful day to Little Mew.
It was pleasant any way to be near this young lady,
who seemed to him to be some beautiful being from
a sphere above the human kind in which he moved.
And then Bart was interested in the subject Annie
presented.  She talked about heaven and its people.
She talked about God; but she did not make him
that far-off being that Bart thought he must be, so
that the louder people prayed the quicker they would
bring him.  She told how near he was, all about us,
so that we could seem to hear his voice in the pleasant
wind, and feel his touch in the soft, warm sunshine.

"But--but," said Bart, "he seems to be behind a
curtain.  I don't see him."

And then the teacher, her voice to Bart's ear
playing a sweeter tune than ever, told how God took
away the curtain; how he came in the Lord Jesus
Christ; that the Saviour was the divine expression
of God's love; and men could see that love going
about their streets, coming into their homes, healing
their sick, and then hanging on the cross that the
world might be brought to God.  Bart had been told
all this before, but somehow it never got so near him.

"What she says somehow gets into me," thought
Bart, looking up into the teacher's face.  He thought
he would like to ask her one question when he was
alone with her.  The school was dismissed, and Bart
lingered that he might walk away with the teacher.

"Could I ask you about something?" he said,
trotting at her side and lifting his queer, oldish face
towards her.

"Certainly; ask all the questions you want.  I
can't say that I can answer them, but there's no harm
in asking them."

"Well, what am I in this world for?"

He said it so abruptly that it amused Annie.

"What are you in this world for?"

"Yes'm.  I don't seem to amount to much."

Bart eagerly watched the face above him, that had
suddenly grown serious; for Annie was thinking of
the little fellow's home--of its unattractiveness, of
the two old people there that seemed so uninteresting,
especially the grandfather, who, as Annie recalled
him, seemed to be only a compound of a whining
voice, a gloomy face, a bad cough, and a clumsy cane.
Then she recalled the slighting way in which she
heard people speak of this odd little fellow, who
seemed to be a figure out of place in life's problem;
one who seemed to run into life's misfortunes, not
waiting that they might run into him--one ill-adjusted
and awry.  Well, what should she say?  She
thought in silence.  Then she stopped him, and
looked down into his face.

Bart never forgot it.  It was as if all of heaven's
beautiful angels she had told about that day were
looking at him through her face, and all of heaven's
beautiful voices were speaking in her tones.

"Bart," she said, "the great reason why you are
in this world is because--God loves you."

What?  He wanted to think that over.

"Because what?" he said.

"Why, Bart," she said, "God is a Father--a great,
dear Father."

Bart began to think he was; but he had been
getting his idea of God through gran'sir's style of
religion, and God seemed more like a judge or a big
police-officer--catching up people and always
marching them off to punishment.

"God is a great, dear Father," the tuneful voice
was saying, "and he wants somebody to love him;
and the more people he makes, the more there are to
love him, or should be, and so he made you.  But
oh, if we don't love him, it disappoints and grieves
him!"

"Does it?" said Bart, thoughtfully, soberly.

"When you are at home--alone, upstairs--you
tell God how you feel about it, just as you would
tell your mother--"

"Or teacher," thought Bart.

"As you would tell your mother if she were on
the earth."

That day, all alone hi his diminutive chamber,
kneeling by a little bed whose clothing was all too
scanty in cold weather, a boy told God he wanted to
love him.  When Bart rose from his knees he said to
himself, "Now, I must try to love other people."

He went downstairs.  Gran'sir was lying on a
hard old lounge, making believe that he was trying
to read his Bible, and at the same time he was very
sleepy.  Bart hesitated, and then said,--

"Gran'sir, don't you--you--want me to get you
a pillow and put under your head?"

"Oh, that's a nice little boy!" said the weary old
grandfather, when his head dropped on the soft
pillow now covering the hard arm of the lounge.

"And, gran'sir, I ain't much on readin'; but
perhaps, if you'd let me, I might read something, you
know."

"Oh, that's a dear little feller," said gran'sir, closing
his eyes, so old and tired.  He had been trying to
read about Jacob and the angels at Beth-el; but the
lounge was so tough that the feature of the story
gran'sir seemed to appreciate most sensibly was that
Jacob slept on a pillow of stones.  I can't say how
much of the story, as Bart read it, gran'sir heard that
day, for he was soon as much lost to the outside
world as tired Jacob was.  He had, though, a beautiful
dream, he afterwards told granny.  Yes; in his
sleep he seemed to see the ladder with its shining,
silver rounds, climbing the sky, and on them were so
many angels, oh, so many angels!

"And, granny," whispered gran'sir, "I was a little
startled, for one of them angels seemed to have
Bartie's face.  I hope nothin' is goin' to happen, for
I am beginnin' to think we should miss that little
chap ever so much."





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.. _`THE LIGHTHOUSE`:

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   \V.

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.. class:: center medium

   *THE LIGHTHOUSE.*

.. vspace:: 2

"You say this is your last Sunday at Shipton.
Sorry!  We shall miss you in the class," said
Dave's new Sunday-school acquaintance, Mr. Tolman.

"Thank you, sir," replied Dave; "but as this is
only my second Sunday in your class, you won't miss
me much."

"Oh yes, we shall.  See here, David.  There is
going to be some company at my house to-morrow
night.  Bring your sister round to tea."

Dave and Annie were at Mr. Tolman's the evening
of the next day; and who was it Dave saw trying to
shrink into one corner?  A stout, fat man, altogether
too big for the corner.

"He looks natural," thought Dave.

At this point the man saw Dave.  He had been
looking very lonely, but his face now brightened as if
he had suddenly seen an old and valued acquaintance.

"Think you don't remember me!" he said, advancing
toward Dave, and extending a large brown hand
shaped something like a flounder.  Dave thought at
once of a lighthouse, a sand-bar, and an old schooner
halting on the bar.

"Oh, the light-keeper, Mr. Tolman!" cried Dave.
"You here?"

"It is my uncle from Black Rocks," said the
younger Mr. Tolman, stepping up to this party of
two.  "Uncle Toby doesn't get off very often from
the light, and we thought he ought to have a little
vacation, and come and see his relatives."

"My nephew James is very good," said Mr. Toby
Tolman.  "The last time I saw you," he added,
addressing Dave, "I put you on board that tug-boat."

Dave dropped his head.

"Oh, you needn't be ashamed of that affair.  I
didn't think at the time you could be the cause of
the mischief, and I've been told since who it was that
was to blame for it."

Dave raised his head.

"Fact is I've been a-thinking of you.  Want a job,
young man?"

"Me, sir?  I expect to go home to-morrow."

"Got to return for anything special?"

"Well, my visit is out."

"Nothing special to call you home?"

"Oh, I help father, and go to school when there is
one."

"Well," said the old light-keeper, fixing his eyes
on the boy, "how should you like to help to keep a
lighthouse for three weeks?"

"Me?" said Dave eagerly.

"Yes, you.  You know I have an assistant, Timothy
Waters.  He wants to be off on a vacation for three
weeks, and I must have somebody to take his place.
I want somebody who can work in there, sort of spry
and handy.  Now, I think you would do.  How
should you like it?"

"When do you want to know?"

"The last of this week."

"I will go home to-morrow and talk it over with
the folks, and I can get you an answer by day after
to-morrow."

"Yes, that will do."

Dave went home, obtained the consent of his
parents, and the boat that brought Timothy Waters
to Shipton to begin his vacation took back to the
lighthouse Dave Fletcher and his trunk.  It was the
light-keeper, Mr. Toby Tolman, who brought the
former assistant to Shipton, and then accompanied
Dave to Black Rocks.  It was a mild summer day.
The wind seemed too lazy to blow, and the sea too
lazy to roll.  There were faint little puffs of air at
intervals, and along the bar and the shore the low
surf turned slowly over as if weary.  The light-tower
and its red annex the fog-signal tower rose up
out of one sea of blue into another of gold, and then
above this sea of sunshine rolled another of blue again,
where the white-sailed clouds seemed to be all
becalmed.  It was low tide, and the light-keeper's dory
brushed against the exposed masses of the ledge,
weed-matted and brown, on which the lighthouse
rested.

"This looks like home to me," said the keeper,
when they had climbed the ladder and gained the
door in the fog-signal tower.  When they entered the
light-tower the keeper detained Dave and said, "I
want to tell you something about my home here on
the rocks.  There, this tower is about seventy feet
high.  It is built as strong as they can make stone
masonry.  This is the first room.  We keep various
stores here.  Do you see this?"

Mr. Tolman with his foot tapped a round iron cover
in the floor and then raised it.

"Down here is the tank where we keep our fresh
water."

The iron cover went down with a dull slam; and
then he pointed out various stores in the
room--vegetables, wood, coal, and a quantity of
hand-grenades (glass flasks filled with a chemical, to be
used in putting out fires).

"How thick are the walls here, Mr. Tolman?"

"Four feet here of stone, solid; and then there is
an inner wall of brick, foot and a half thick.  Now
we will go up into the kitchen.  You saw those
hand-grenades of ours.  Precious little here that will
burn.  You see the stairways from room to room are
of iron, and then every floor has an iron deck covered
with hard pine.  Ah, my fire is still in!"

Yes, the kitchen stove had guarded well its fire,
and the heat of the room was tempered by a mild,
cool draught of air that came through an opened
window from the flashing sea without.  Besides a
softly-cushioned rocking-chair near the stove, there
were three chairs ranged near a small dining-room
table, and their language was, "You will find a
welcome here."  Clock, looking-glass, cupboard,
lamp-shelf, and other conveniences were in the room.

"Let's take a peep at the next room," said the
keeper.

Again they climbed an iron staircase, and reached a
bedroom.  Besides a single bed, there were a clothes-closet,
three green chairs, a green stand, a gilt-framed
looking-glass, and on the wall several pictures of
sea-life.  The floor was covered with oil-cloth, and
directly before the bed was a rag mat that had a
very domestic look.

"There--this is my room; and now we will go up
into the assistant's, your quarters.  We will bring up
your trunk directly," said the keeper.  This room
was furnished like the keeper's, only it had two
chairs, and before the bed was a strip of woollen
carpet.

"I can put my trunk anywhere, I suppose, Mr. Tolman?"

"Anywhere you please."

"Mother gave me a few pictures, too, that she said
I could stick up, to make it look homelike."

"Just what I like to have you do.  Now for the
watch-room."

This was at the head of another iron stairway, and
held a small table, a library-case, a green chest, two
chairs, and a closet for the keeping of curtains that
might be used in the lantern, and other useful apparatus.

"This room is where we can sit and watch the
lantern," explained the keeper.

"And what is this?" asked Dave, pointing at a
weight that hung down from the ceiling.

"That weight?  It is a part of the machinery that
turns round the lens in the lantern.  Now, let us go
up into the lantern."

The lantern was a circular room.  The walls were
of iron, up to the height of three feet, and cased with
wood, and then there was a succession of big panes
of the clearest glass, making a broad window that
extended about all the lantern.  In the centre was
a lens of "the fourth order," shaped like a cone, and
consisting of very strong magnifying prisms of glass.
Within this lens was a kerosene-lamp.

"There!" said Mr. Tolman; "all this tower of stone,
all the arrangements of the place, all the serving of
the keeper and his assistant, all the doing by day and
the watching by night, is just to keep that little lamp
a-going.  Put out the lamp at night, and you might
just as well send the keepers home and tear down the
lighthouse."

"It is not so big a lamp as I supposed."

"No; that is a small lamp for so big a light as
folks outside see.  It is this lens that does the work
of magnifying."

"Can I step outside, sir?  I wanted to when we
were down here that night, but we did not have so
good a chance for looking about."

"Oh yes."

Outside of the lantern was a "deck," about six feet
broad, and compassing the lantern.  It was a shelf of
stone covered with iron.

"Good view here," said the keeper.

"Yes; nothing to hide the prospect," replied Dave.
"There is Shipton up beyond the harbour, and there
is the sea in the other direction."

Only sea, sea, sea, to north, south, east--one wide,
restless play of blue water.

"The wind must blow up here sometimes, Mr. Tolman."

"Blow!  That is a mild word for it; and in
winter it is cold.  It is no warm job when we have
to scrape the snow and ice off the lantern.  Folks
outside must see, and it is our place to let them see."

When the keeper and Dave returned to the kitchen,
preparations for dinner were started, and then
Mr. Tolman said, "We have a few minutes to spare,
and I guess we will take up our boat."

"Take it up?"

"Well, if it should promise to be a quiet day I
could moor it near the light; but, of course, in rough
weather, when everything is tumbling round the
rocks, I had better have it h'isted into a safe place.
I'll show you."

"Isn't it going to be quiet?" asked Dave eagerly.
"I'd like to see a storm out here."

"Better see it than feel it, I tell ye.  I don't know
but that it will be fair," said the keeper, at the door
of the fog-signal tower, looking out upon the water,
while a light breeze gently lifted and dropped the thin
gray locks on his brow.  "May be fair, but
still--still--I don't know.  A bit hazy in the no'th-east."

"Oh, if it would storm!" said Dave enthusiastically.

The keeper smiled at his eagerness, and said: "I
think you'll have your wish before you get through;
and it's a tough place out here in a storm, the wind
howling round the light, the big breakers thundering
and smashing along the bar, the spray flying up
to the lantern, or, if there is a fog, the old fog-horn
screeching dismally.  What do you think of it?  That
don't suit you, does it?"

"Oh, splendidly!"

"Well, we will get the boat up.  You see we have
'tackle and falls' right here at the door, rigged
overhead, you see, and we can get up 'most anything.
If you will go down and make the boat fast, we will
then raise her."

Dave descended, attached the boat at her stern and
bows to the suspended tackle, and returned to the
keeper's side.  Then they pulled on the ropes.  The
boat came readily up, and hung opposite the door of
the fog-signal tower.

"Now we are all right," declared Dave.  "This is
a fortress where we have a boat, and can go off if we
wish, but no enemy can get to us."

All this increased the keeper's pleasure in witnessing
the eagerness of Dave.  At dinner the keeper
rehearsed his duties, and added,--

"May not seem as if there was much to be done,
but to keep everything in good condition it takes
some time, and then there may be fogs--oh my!"

This made Dave, of course, none the less anxious
to hear the big breakers booming against the
lighthouse, and as an accompaniment the fog-horn
moaning hoarsely.  The keeper gave Dave his course of
duties during the day; and while they despatched
dinner he told Dave also about a heavy storm just
"ten years ago that very day."  And this only fired
up Dave's anxiety to see what the keeper termed "a
howler."

"Don't you feel lonely here sometimes, sir?"

"Well, we get used to almost everything.  I am
only lonely when my assistant is away; and if I am
occupied, then loneliness don't bother me much.  I am
generally pretty busy.  By sunrise my light must be
out in the lantern.  I must make a trip upstairs for
that, any way.  Then there is breakfast.  People's
appetites are apt to be pretty good out here, and
sometimes it is no small job just to do the cooking.
I believe in living well--in having plenty to eat, and
in having a variety.  After breakfast, first thing,
Timothy and I have prayers--same as folks do at
home, you know.  Then we look after the lantern.
That takes time--to trim the lamp, keep the lens
clean, and see that the windows of the lantern are
polished bright.  Then in the forenoon I do my
baking--bread, cake, and so on.  Well, if the fog should set
in, that would upset other arrangements, and we must
watch the fog-signal.  Oh, there is a lot to be done!
Noon comes before one knows it.  In the afternoon
I like to get a little time to read; but then it may be
foggy, or one must go to town, or perhaps the town
may come to us.  I have a good many visitors in
summer-time.  That makes a pleasant change."

"How do you manage at night?"

"We relieve one another.  One is on watch till
twelve, and the other takes his turn till sunrise.  I
will make it as easy for you as I can, and--"

"Oh, I can stand it."

"Well, we will see.  But speaking about daytime,
one must make up then for the sleep he loses at night.
So you see the hours are filled up.  I read in the
night considerable.  I am going to propose one thing.
You will find some valuable books up in the library-case
in the watch-room.  I want you to select one
and read it.  I have been astonished to see how much
I could read by keeping at it sort of steady, as we
say; giving myself a stint perhaps every day, and
sticking to it.  Hadn't you better try it?"

"I think I will."

Dave noticed that the light-keeper was very
particular to have prayers each morning directly after
breakfast, and then at some other time during the
day he would be likely to be bending over his Bible.
It was an impressive sight.  The ocean might be
rolling the heavy breakers across the bar as if driving
heavy, white-headed battering-rams toward the land.
Against the tower itself the ponderous billows would
throw themselves, and sweep in a crashing torrent
between the light and fog-signal towers.  Within, in
the sheltered kitchen, the light-keeper would sit at his
table bending over his Bible, his countenance at rest
as the shadow of God's great protecting promises fell
over him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FOG`:

.. class:: center large

   \VI.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *FOG.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Here are some letters for you," said the
light-keeper, returning from Shipton one noon
and handing Dave a package of letters.

"This is a funny-looking one," thought Dave.  "It
is not written, but printed.  Somebody sent it that
did not know how to write.  Let me see what it
says:--

.. vspace:: 2

"'DEAR DAVIE I THOUGHT I WOULD WRITE YOU A
LITTLE AND SAY I AM WELL AND HOPE YOU ARE
GRANSIR IS BETTER BECAUSE I READ TO HIM HE
SAYS I LIKE MY TEACHER SHE IS YOUR SISTER
SHE SAYS SHE MAY TAKE ME TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
AND I WOULD LIKE TO COME I SHALL PRAY FOR
YOU WHEN THE STORMS COME AND EVERY DAY
YOUR TRUE FRIEND

.. class:: left medium

"'BARTHOLOMEW TRAFTON.'"

.. vspace:: 2

Dave was so much pleased with this communication
that he read it to the light-keeper.

"Dave, I wish you would invite your sister and
her friends to come down here.  Ask those boys who
were with you in the schooner."

"That would be pleasant.  Thank you."

"I will try to make it interesting for them."

"Oh, I wish you would do one thing."

"What is that?"

"Tell us what you know about lighthouses."

"Well, let me think.  There is one thing I could
do.  I have in my drawer an account of lighthouses
I have written off at spare moments, just to keep me
busy, you know, and I could read that."

"I think we would all like that very much."

"All right; let us plan for a visit."

"I think you have had some visitors since you have
been here that you did not plan for."

"Yes, indeed; and they may come any time, just
as your party surprised me.  Sometimes, though near
me, they may not get to me.  I was saying the first
day you came here it was the tenth anniversary of a
great storm.  It was a foreign vessel, a Norwegian
bark.  The vessel struck on the bar--"

"Couldn't they see the light?"

"The fog was very thick, so that they couldn't have
got much warning from the light.  The first thing to
do now in a fog, of course, is to start the signal.  But
we had none then--only an old bell I used to strike;
but when the wind was to south'ard it carried away
from the bar the sound of the bell.  This was a
southerly storm, and such storms are not likely to be
long, but they may blow very hard while they do last.
I heard the storm roaring through the night; and when
I looked out in the morning, there was this vessel just
on the bar!  Oh, what a tumult she was in!  Such
a raging of the waves all around that vessel!  I always
go off to the help of people if I can reach them; but
there was no reaching that vessel with a boat.  Yes,
I could see them and they could see me in the
morning, when the fog lifted, but there was no getting
from one to the other.  I could see them clinging to
the rigging, hanging there as long as the waves would
let them.  I would watch some immense sea--and
they roll up big in a storm, I tell ye--come rushing
at the vessel, rolling over it, completely burying the
deck.  After such seas some one would be missing.
I never want to see that sight again.  There they
were dying, and I couldn't get anywhere near them!
The vessel did not break up at once.  She was there
the next day, and I went to her, and others went, but
we found nobody aboard.  I think they saved part of
her cargo; but the waves pounded her up fearfully,
and carried off many things of her cargo.  One by
one they came ashore.  It did touch me one day, when
I was down on the rocks fishing, near the lighthouse
at low tide, to see something floating on the water.
'Why, that is a box,' I said.  We are all curious, you
know, and I wondered what was in that box.  I went
to the lighthouse, got a long pole, and reached the
box and brought it ashore.  I'll show it to you if you
would like to see it."

"I would, very much."

"I have always kept it here, for it seems to belong
to the lighthouse rather than anywhere else.  Here
it is."

He went to the closet in the kitchen, and reaching
up to the highest shelf, took down a box of
sandalwood.  It was an elaborately carved piece of work,
and had served among the articles for a lady's toilet.
When the light-keeper opened it Dave saw two
handkerchiefs, a hair-brush, a comb, and there was also
a man's picture.  Dave looked with interest at this
relic washed up out of the buried secrets of the sea,
and still keeping its own secret there in the
light-keeper's kitchen.

"Did you ever get any clue to the ownership of this,
Mr. Tolman?" asked Dave.

"Let me tell you of one strange thing that happened
about a year ago.  One night I was very sure I heard
a cry out on the bar.  The waves make so much noise
that it is hard to hear anybody if they do shout; but
sometimes when the sea is still you can hear a call.
Said I to Waters, 'Timothy, I hear a hollering.'  Said
he, 'I think I hear it myself.  Let us go to the door
and listen.'  We were both in the kitchen, you know.
'Twas the fore part of the evening, though dark.  Sure
enough, at the door we could hear somebody shout.
'Timothy,' said I, 'that is a plain case.  Let's launch
the boat.'  So off we put.  The person kept hollering
and we kept rowing.  There on the bar we found a
man.  Crazy he acted, and he couldn't tell much about
himself--how he got there, or where his boat was.
He was not sober.  On our way to the light what
should we run into but a boat.  'Here is the rest of
him,' whispered Timothy.  We took him and his boat
to the light.  How we got him up the ladder I don't
know, but we tied a rope round him, and drew him,
and shoved him, and somehow got him into the
lighthouse.  The next morning he was entirely sober.  Of
course he was very much ashamed, but he could not
give any account of himself, only that he had been in
a boat and had trouble.  Well, for some reason I had
that box down from the shelf that morning he left,
and I had been looking at it.  He saw it.  He started
as if the box had struck him.  He stepped up to it
softly, looked into it, and said, with an amazed look
as I ever saw on a person, 'Where--where--did you
get it?'  'It floated from a wreck off here.'  'Anybody
ever claim it?'  'Never,' I said;  'but I am ready
to give it up to any claimant.'  'Well,' said he, 'if
anybody comes and claims it, you give it up; but if
not, don't part with it till you hear from me.'  I
asked him what he meant; but he would make no
explanation, only repeating his request.  He was very
grateful for what we had done, and I took the liberty
to say in a proper way that he must take warning, or
he would be wrecked on a bar where there would be
no saving.  He burst into tears, thanked me, said he
knew he was a great fool, and left in his boat.  We
watched him, and saw him row to a vessel lying at
anchor in the harbour.  Then we guessed he had been
ashore the day before in the ship's boat, and got into
mischief.  I told Timothy we would find out about
the vessel; but a fog came up and kept us here.  She
slipped out to sea as much a stranger as ever.  Fishermen
afterwards told us it was a vessel that ran in for
shelter.

"From that day to this I have never heard about the
man.  Sometimes I think it was a foreigner; again
I fancy it is somebody at Shipton, but I could not
say.  I am there very little to know about people;
and Timothy couldn't tell about it.  He don't belong
to Shipton.  There is the box.  Pretty, isn't it?"

Dave nodded a yes.

"Mr. Tolman, could you tell the man if you should
see him again?" asked Dave.

"Could I?  yes, indeed."

"How did he look?  What was the colour of his
hair, his eyes; and how was he dressed?"

"Now--you will think it strange--I can't tell any
of his features or what clothes he wore, and yet if I
should see him I don't believe I should miss him.  I
could tell him by the look of his eyes--a look that
somehow appealed to me--a look without hope.  Often
when at night I see the froth on the bar in the
moonlight, I seem to hear that man calling to me, and I
take it as a sign that he is still in a worse fix than if
on the bar.  It is an awful curse, rum, and I am a
sworn foe to it."

Here the light-keeper placed the sandal-wood box
again on its shelf, and Dave turned to look out of the
window near the kitchen table.

"See here, Mr. Tolman; what's that?"

"Where?"

"Floating and curling over that point!"

"Can't you guess?"

"Looks like fog!  Yes, I can see now plainly.
Oh, can we start up the fog-signal?"

"Wait a while.  When the fog is so thick that you
can't see Breakers P'int, then we start the fog-signal.
That is the sign in that direction.  On the other side
of the lighthouse it is Jones's Neck that must be
hidden.  I guess both the P'int and the Neck will
be covered this time.  I must start the fire in the
engine and have everything ready, at any rate.  Let
us go into the fog-signal tower."

Dave was delighted.

"I suppose, Mr. Tolman, people like to hear the
signal?"

"Yes, if in a fog.  They want to know which way
to go.  Even fishermen about here, who are supposed
to know the way about the harbour, may be bothered
by the fog; but people just off for pleasure may be
bothered a good deal."

"See here!  Isn't the fog lifting round Jones's Neck,
Mr. Tolman?"

Dave was looking out of a window in the tower,
and Mr. Tolman joined him.

"You are right; and Breakers P'int is clear too.
We will hold on then, have everything ready, you
know, for the fog may shut down suddenly."

Dave continued to look out of the window.

"Coming again!" he cried to the light-keeper, who
had kept up his fires in the engine-room, but had gone
for a few minutes to the kitchen.  "Fog is round
Breakers Point and Jones's Neck!"

Yes: like an immense gray sponge the mist had
once more advanced, wiping out the vessels slowly
sailing into harbour, the far outlying points of land,
and now erased an islet called the Nub, mingling all
in one confusing cloud.

"All right," said the light-keeper; "we will start
the signal."

There was the driving of a stout piston; there
was the stirring of a big wheel; there was the
movement of other machinery; and there was finally--"What
a noise overhead!" thought the listening
Dave.  It seemed as if five thousand bees all buzzing
at once, twenty-five thousand crickets all shrilly
piping at once, and fifty thousand wood-sawyers all
sawing at once, had combined their noises and were
forcing all through the flaming fog-trumpet above.
For ten seconds Dave held his fingers in his ears.
Then there was a blessed stillness, save as the play of
the machinery interrupted it.

"What do you think of that?" asked Mr. Tolman,
grinning broadly.  "Some lung power left in it yet."

"Lung power!  They can hear that down to the
Cape of Good Hope.  One is enough for both sides of
the ocean."

"Want another?  Time is 'most up.  Here she goes!"

She went.

"Toot--buzz--boom--whiz--fizz-z-z--bim-m-m-m!"

Among the breakers tumbling on the sandy shores,
along the face of weather-beaten island-edges, down
amid the waves and up in the clouds echoed the
sharp, strong, fog-piercing, ear-cutting blast.  And
wherever it went it said, "Of fog I warn-n-n-n-n!"
for ten seconds.

In one of the intervals of rest Dave remarked, "Now
that must be kept up as long as the fog lasts?"

"Of course."

"Doesn't it get tiresome?"

"Well, that's how you take it.  I was told of a
lighthouse where the signal was going twenty-one
days."

"Day after day!  Just think of it!"

"Well, there is this side of it: off on the water
there is somebody bewildered by the mist, perplexed
day after day, it may be, and they catch the sound of
the signal.  Oh, ain't that good news?  That's what
makes me contented at it.  I have sometimes wished
I was a musician, and could please others by my
playing; but I tell you I have stood by this old engine
dark, rainy, foggy nights, and oh, I have been so
happy starting up and sending out this old whistle.
There it is!"

"Toot--buzz--boom--whiz--bim-m-m-m!"

"Somebody heard that, you may believe, and somebody,
too, more pleased than if I had been a whole
band of music, and had sent out just the sweetest tune."

The light-keeper stood by the tugging engine and
wiped the perspiration from his brow, and his big,
rosy face was as happy as that of a school-boy going
off on a long vacation.

"Hark! what is that?  Sounds like a bell," said Dave.

"It is the bell-buoy at Sunk Rock.  We only hear
that when the wind is blowing off the sea."

"Didn't hear it before."

"Wind hasn't been just right to hear it loud.  I
have caught it since you came; but then I am used
to its sound, and can tell it easily."

"I must see it."

"Oh, we shall have a chance, I guess."

The fog-signal had been shrieking away an hour,
and Dave heard another sound.

"That isn't a bell I hear now," he said.

"Well, no; that's a hollering."

Was it a cry from the lighthouse tower or a cry
outside of it? a cry from what quarter?  Dave looked
out of a window near him.  He could see only fog
above and waves below.

"I will go down to the door and try to see who or
what it is," said Dave, "for there is that cry again."

He descended to the door of the tower and looked
down through the hole in the platform.  Then he saw
a dory tossing in the water that now flowed all about
the tower, swashing against its iron walls.  There was
a boy in the boat.  He was not looking up, but
clinging to a rope stretched for purposes of mooring
from the tower to a sunken rock forty feet away.
Steadying his boat by this rope, he was waiting for
some response to his repeated calls.

"Hullo, there!" shouted Dave.

The boy looked up, still grasping the rope.

"That you, Dave?"

"Yes.  That you, Dick?  Where did you come from?"

"Yes, Dick Pray, and nobody else."

"Won't you come up?"

"Well, yes, I should like to, but the water is
uneasy.  Can't get out of my boat."

"Hold on; I will come down and help you."  He
stepped within the tower and reported, "Mr. Tolman,
this fog has brought somebody."

"Don't wonder at it.  Give him any help he needs."

"I want a short rope."

"There's one hanging on that nail."

Dave took the rope, went to the door of the tower,
and descended the ladder.

"Here, Dick!  Take your painter and tie it to that
mooring-rope, allowing enough slack to bring your
boat almost to the tower and yet not touch it.
There! if that length isn't right you can try it
again.  Now catch this rope and make fast to the
stern there.  So!  That's it!  Now I'll pull you in."

Dave drew on his end of the rope, and pulled Dick's
boat so near the ladder that Dick could spring to it,
and yet the boat itself was left to swing in the waves
while it could not strike the tower.

"I'll just make fast my end of the rope, Dick, and
we will go up the ladder."

"All right.  Glad to get out of that old boat and
go up with you."

"Why, where under the sun and moon have you been?"

"Me?  Been camping out on the Nub."

"You haven't!"

"But I have."

"That your tent over there?"

"Mine and Sam Whittles's."

"Tolman and I noticed it to-day for the first time.
How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to eat you or Toby Tolman--you
may draw lots for the honour--if you don't give me
some food."

"Oh, we will soon give you that.  Among other
things I will give you some fish.  Got some splendid
cunners, and I will divide with you."

"Good!  I could eat 'em raw.  Hungry as a shark.
Sam is hungrier.  I don't know as he will wait for
me, but throw himself into the water and go after
the fish himself."

"O Dickie, we will make you feel like a new
being.  Come in and see Tolman.  He is a splendid
old fellow.  Come in this way."

The boys went up into the engine-room.

"An old acquaintance, Mr. Tolman," said Dave.

"I see, I see," replied the light-keeper, recognizing
Dick as one of the schooner party.

"Whiz--bim--fizz--"

"It sounded splendid out at Shag Rocks," shouted
Dick to the light-keeper.

"You been there?" inquired Mr. Tolman.

"Yes; and this old fog came up and confused me,
and I didn't know where I was, and I heard the
signal and I put for it," said Dick.

"Out there fishing?"

"Yes, sir; or--I wanted to fish, but didn't catch
a fin."

"Shag Rocks you went to?"

"Yes, sir; two ledges with a strip of sand between
them."

"Oh, those are 'Spectacle Rocks,' as the fishermen
say.  They look like a pair of spectacles.  You
wouldn't catch much there.  Shag Rocks are to the
nor'ard."

"Well, I'm willing they should stay there."

"Next time, you come here.  Splendid chance off
this very ledge; Black Rocks, as we call them."

"That would be wise, I think."

"Well, make yourself at home.--Dave, you give
him something to eat."

"I thought I would let him have some of those
cunners to take with him."

"So do, but give him something now.--And you
don't want to go back in this fog?"

"Well, I'd rather have clear weather if I have got
to find the Nub," said Dick.

The fog, though, refused to clear up that day, and
Dick remained all night.

"I pity Sam," he told Dave; "but he has got a
teapot, and he must live on that till morning.  I'll
give him a surprise to-morrow, I tell you.  I will
throw my line into the water off these rocks here,
and carry to camp a string of fish worth having.  I'll
open Sam's eyes for him."

Dick, though, overslept his intended hour of rising.
It was Dave who came rushing into the assistant-keeper's
room, where Dick had been sleeping, and he
cried, "Dick, Dick! there is a furious shouting for
you.  Two men and a young fellow are down in a
boat at the foot of the tower, and want you."

"I'll be there directly," said Dick, springing out of
his bed.  He dressed quickly, and rushed down to
the door of the signal-tower.  Looking below, he
exclaimed, "That you, Sam Whittles?"

"Yes.  Where have you been?  Didn't sleep a
wink last night.  Thought you were drowned and
everything else.  Got these two fishermen who came
along to pull me here in their boat.  Come, boy,
come home!"

"Fury!" said Dick in his thoughts.  "Won't--won't
you come up?" he asked aloud.  "I was going
to surprise you, take you some fish, and so on."

"Fish!" said Sam contemptuously; "these men
will sell it to me by the acre."

"Squar mile, ef he wants it," said one of these
piscatory individuals, looking up and grinning.

"Won't you all come up?" asked Dave Fletcher.

"Can't, thank you," said Sam.  "Just throw that
Jonah overboard, and we will go home."

"Jonah" said it was "too bad," and stole down the
ladder, feeling worse than on the day he returned in
the runaway schooner.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CAMP AT THE NUB`:

.. class:: center large

   \VII.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *THE CAMP AT THE NUB.*

.. vspace:: 2

Two days later the light-keeper gave Dave a
holiday, that he might spend a day at the
Nub.  Dick Pray came after him, and as he rowed
off from the lighthouse he called out to the keeper,
who stood in the tower door, "Don't worry about
your assistant.  I will bring him home after dinner.
Get here by four."

The keeper nodded his head.  He said to himself,
"May be; but if I don't see a boat starting off from
the Nub by a quarter of four, I shan't leave it to you
to bring him, but go myself for him.  You are great
on what you are going to do; I like the kind that
does."

It was a pleasant boat-ride to the Nub.

"Welcome!" shouted several young men in chorus
as Dick's dory neared the shore of the Nub.  They
stood on a broad, flat stone, for which the rock-weed
had woven a brown mat, and on the crown of the
ledge behind them rose a tent tipped with a dirty flag.

"Hurrah!" responded Dick.

"Hurrah!" shouted Dave.

"I thought, Dick," said Dave, "only Sam Whittles
was here."

"Oh, these fellers came down last night.  Just to
spend a couple of days, you know."

"Who are they?"

"Oh, Jimmy Dawes, I believe, and there's Steve
Pettigrew and a Keese Junkins."

Dave's feelings of like and dislike were very quick
in their operation, and he now said to himself, "Don't
fancy those specimens!"

They were showily rather than tastefully dressed,
strutted about with a self-important air, and their
talk was loud, coarse, and slangy.

"Who is that little fellow?" asked Dave, noticing
a small boy in the rear of the tent.

"Oh, that is a kind of servant they brought down
with them.  He came down, and waits on them just
for his board.  He is a queer chap, and makes fun for
us all.  We call him Dovey.  Don't know what his
real name is.  Splendid place here for camp!"

"Tolman doesn't like it; says you can't get on or
off easy."

"O Dave, Tolman is an old fogey.  But here we are."

The boat was bumping against the landing-rock,
and Dick and Dave disembarked amid a chorus of
"How are ye?" "Step ashore!" and other friendly
salutations.  So cordial were these that Dave's dislike
was put to sleep, and he said to himself, "They are
pleasant.  Good-hearted, I daresay."

The tent within was an assortment of bedding,
camp-chests, old clothes, and provisions, all mixed up
in great confusion.  Dave thought the outside of the
tent would be more agreeable than the inside, which
was clouded with tobacco smoke.  He took a seat
without, and looked off upon the sea.  It was a vivid
summer day.  All the colouring of nature was very
bright and sharp.  The sky was very blue; the clouds
were very white; the water was very dark, and the
foam of the breakers white as the flakes scattered by
the storms of January.  Dick and the others were
discussing plans for dinner.  As Dave sat alone,
watching the white sails slowly drifting across the
distant sea, a light hand was laid on his shoulder by
some one who had stepped up behind him.  It was
not a big, coarse hand, but a gentle pressure such as
a child might make.

"Oh, it is the boy Dick told about," thought Dave;
"it's that Dovey."  He looked up, and to his surprise
there was Little Mew!

"Why, Bartie, you down here?" exclaimed Dave,
turning and looking with interest at the small, twisted
features of Bartholomew Trafton.

"Yes; and I am glad to see you.  Did you get
my letter?"

Bart had seated himself beside Dave, and rested
his hand on Dave's knee as if he were a little boat
gladly tying up to a friendly pier.

.. figure:: images/img-098.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Bart seated himself beside Dave and rested his hand on his knee."

   "Bart seated himself beside Dave and rested his hand on his knee."  *Page 97*.]

"Yes, I got your letter, and it was a very nice one.
There is a party, too, coming down to the lighthouse,
and I thought you might be in it.  My sister will be
one, I expect."

"Teacher?"

"Yes; and Mr. James Tolman, my teacher when I
was in the school, is going to bring them."

"Oh, I wish I could go.  I don't like it here."

As he spoke he turned his head and looked about
as if to make sure that no one heard him save Dave.

"Well, how did you come here?"

"Reese Junkins," said Bartie, again looking back.
"He lives near us.  He came to the house and told
gran'sir and granny they wanted a boy to go with
them and just wait in the tent, and he would look
after me, and I might like it.  But I don't like it."

Here if his eyes had been straight, and Dave had
followed their glance, he would have noticed that
Bartie was looking at a basket of bottles near a rear
corner of the tent.

"I don't like to be with such people; they make
too much noise."

He bravely concealed the fact that they made fun
of him, though his soul was vexed and torn by their
unkind jokes.

"Well, you know Dick."

"Yes; but he has forgotten me.  He only saw me
that day."

That day meant the time of the rescue from the
water.  Dave looked into the face turned trustingly
toward his own.

"Don't you worry, Bartie; I will look after you."

The boy looked up so gratefully, and the hand on
Dave's knee pressed harder.  The little boat rejoiced
to have found such good moorings.

----

About half-past three Dave said to Dick, "I think
I must be going, if you can row me across.  You know
I said I would be back by four, and I shall be needed
at the light."

"All right," replied Dick.

"Going?" called out Sam.  "Don't hurry."

"Thank you; but I think I must be starting,"
said Dave.

"Don't go!"

This last was a timid, pitiful voice.

Dave turned, and there was Little Mew.

"Oh, I must go, Bartie.  You see I said I would
go back this afternoon, and the keeper will look for
me at the light."

"Oh take me!" he begged aside.

"You really want to go--really, Bartie?"

"Oh yes; I'll ask them."

Bart turned to Dick and Sam, and asked if he could
go to the lighthouse.

"We have no objection," they said.

"Very well," said Dave, who saw the place was a
prison for the little fellow.

But what did it mean that Steve, Billy, and Reese
leaned against the boat, and looked sullen as a
fog-bank on the horizon?

"You can't have this boat!" muttered Steve.

"But it's one I borrowed," shouted Dick angrily.
"Hands off!  This fellow is my company, and he shall
be treated as he ought to be."

"We will row him over ourselves in the morning,
or--or--maybe--we will spill him out half-way
across.  Ha! ha!"

Billy's tone was sarcastic and offensive.

"No, you won't!" said Dave, who, indignant beyond
the power to quietly state his feeling, had remained
silent.  "Somebody's coming after me."

"What?" said Reese in amazement, looking toward
Black Rocks.

"Who's a-coming?"

They all looked off and saw a dory advancing from
the direction of the lighthouse.

"That's Tolman, the light-keeper!" explained Dick.

"Who cares for Tolman, the light-keeper?--Boy,"
said Billy Dawes, turning to Dave and shaking a
dirty fist insultingly, "we don't want anything to do
with you."

"You may be glad to have my help," replied Dave.

"No help from babies.  Remember that," said Billy.

Dave's face was red with wrath.  What would he
do?  He was in no danger, for close at hand was
Toby Tolman, a champion of no mean size, and the
rowdies stupidly gazed at him rowing his boat with
all the ease of a strong, skilled oarsman.

"All ready!" exclaimed Dave, advancing to meet
the light-keeper's boat.  "Good-bye, Dick."

"Oh--oh--take me!" sobbed Bart.

"What does that booby want?" asked Reese.

"He wants to go to the lighthouse," explained Sam.

"Well, let him go," replied Reese.  "He has been
a bother ever since he came."

With what joy Bart's small legs wriggled over the
side of the keeper's dory!

"This little fellow, in whom I am interested, wants
to go, if you will let him," said Dave to the
light-keeper; "and he can go to Shipton with the party
expecting to come down, you know, to visit us."

"All right; and tumble in yourself, Dave."

"Here I am!" replied Dave.  "Let me push off!"

Toby Tolman's boat was quickly rising and falling
with the sea that rocked about the Nub, and the
departure was watched in an amazed, ignoble silence by
the three rowdies leaning against Dick's boat.

"I am so much obliged to you for coming," said
Dave to the keeper, "though I did not mean to trouble
you.  Things were rather squally at the Nub, and you
came just in time.  I will tell you about it."

When Dave had given his story, the light-keeper,
resting on his oars, exclaimed, "There!  I guessed as
much.  I didn't feel easy about you.  That Dick is
a well-meaning boy, I don't doubt; but when I found
out that Sam Whittles was with him, I guessed what
kind of a camp they would have at the Nub, and it
seems my guess was about right.--And this little lamb?"

Bart's eyes brightened at this pitying title; the
appellatives bestowed upon him had generally been
of a different nature.

It was a happy party that went into the lighthouse
after the trip from the Nub.

"Oh, isn't this nice!" cried Bart, as he entered the
kitchen.  The sense of peaceful, safe seclusion, the
warm fire in the kitchen stove, above all, the
protecting friends near him, made the place seem like--Bart
whispered to himself what he thought it must be
like--"heaven!"

When he thought of the Nub he shuddered.

What a happy boy it was that tumbled into the
bed where the keeper told him he could sleep that
night!  Dave added to his happiness by an
acknowledgment made.  "Bartie," he whispered.

"What, Davie?"

"I owe you a good deal for stopping me at the
dinner at the Nub."

"Stopping you?"

"When I didn't think, and lifted that glass, you
know."

"Oh, but you wouldn't have touched it."

"If you had not been there, Bart, I don't know
what might have happened."

"Oh, I am sure you would have come out all right,"
shouted confidently this diminutive mentor.  And yet
as he was falling asleep that night, hushed by the
sound of the waves musically breaking against the
walls of the lighthouse, a thought came to him and
steeped his soul in comfort, that as Dave might
have yielded, he--just Little Mew--might have been
of some use, and so not for nought had God sent into
the world this puny little fellow.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VISITORS`:

.. class:: center large

   \VIII.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *VISITORS.*

.. vspace:: 2

Into the kitchen of the old lighthouse they came
trooping the next day--Annie Fletcher, with all
her winning vivacity; Jimmy Davis and his sister
Belle, Dab and John Richards, and May Tolman, with
her black, lustrous eyes, in which diamonds seemed to
be dissolving continually (so Dave thought).  May
Tolman was the light-keeper's granddaughter.  Then
there was Mr. James Tolman, who came as skipper
of the sail-boat bringing the party.  Dave and Bart
joined them at the door of the fog-signal tower; and
to what a scampering, laughing, singing, and shouting
did the gray stone walls listen as this flock of young
people hurried in!  Behind all was the gray-haired
keeper; but no heart was lighter than his that day.
Unobserved he went to a window through which
blew the cool, sweet, strong air from the sea, and he
silently thanked God for the gift of youth renewed
that day in his own soul and lifting him on wings,
so that he too wanted to sing and shout, to race up
and down the iron stairs, to clap his hands jubilantly,
as from the parapet around the lantern he saw the
breakers foam below and the white sea-gulls soar up
and then down on strong, steady wing.

"Yes, bless God, I am still young--and ever shall
be," thought the old light-keeper.  Ah, he had renewed
his youth long ago at the fountains of spiritual life,
in the drinking of whose waters the soul becomes
perennial in a new sense.

"Now, what shall I do for all these young folks?"
he said to himself.  "I will certainly do whatever I
can."

He showed them the lighthouse from storeroom to
lantern, and then he carried them into the engine-room
of the fog-signal tower and explained all the
machinery there.

"*If*--if--we could only hear one toot!" exclaimed
Annie Fletcher.

"Maybe the fog will come," replied Toby Tolman.

"Oh, if it would!" said Annie; and--it didn't.

"Too bad," everybody said.

"What else can I do?" wondered the light-keeper.
Dave reminded him of one thing.

"Oh yes," the keeper replied.  "Well, get them all
together in the kitchen."

There clustered, the keeper told them, if they would
excuse it, he would by request read them something
about lighthouses.

"Don't expect much, though," he warned them, as
he lifted his spectacles and adjusted them to his sight.
"I have written this off at different times, perhaps in
the evening when I have been watching, or in a storm
when I could catch a little rest from work, or when
I felt a bit lonely and wanted something to occupy
me.  I won't read all I have got, only what I think
will interest.  I first speak of ancient lighthouses."

Hemming vigorously several times, blushing modestly
behind his spectacles in the consciousness that
the world was summoning him forth to be a lecturer,
he then began:--

"I suppose the first lighthouses were very simple--that
is, they were not lighthouses at all, but men
just built big fires and kept them burning at points
along an ugly shore, or to show where a harbour was.
Not long ago I was looking at a picture of a
lighthouse doing work in our day and generation in
Eastern Asia.  It looked like a structure of wood.  It
probably had on top a hearth of some kind of earth,
for there a fire was burning away.  Not far off was
the water.  That looked primitive.

"If one turns to Rollin's 'Ancient History,' he will
find in the first volume an interesting account of an
old lighthouse, and it was so wonderful they called
it one of the seven wonders of the world.  It was
built by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and he laid
out eight hundred talents on it.  One estimate of the
value of this sum would bring it pretty well up to
£180,000.  As it stood on an island called Pharos,
near Alexandria, the tower had the name of the island.
That has given a name to like towers.  In French, I am
told, the word *phare* means 'lighthouse.'  In Spanish,
*faro* means 'lighthouse.'  In English, too, when we
say a pharos, we know, or ought to know, what it
means.  I can see how useful this old lighthouse may
have been.  On its top a fire was kindled.  Alexandria
was in Egypt, and the city is standing to-day, as
we all know.  It had at that time a very extensive
trade, and as the sea-coast there is a dangerous one,
it was very important that the ships should have some
guide at night.  I can seem to see the old craft of
those days plodding along, the sailors wondering which
way to go, when lo, on Pharos's lofty tower blazes a
fire to tell them their course.

"The architect of this tower was Sostratus, and
there was an inscription on the tower said to have
read this way: 'Sostratus, the Cnidian, son of
Dexiphanes, to the protecting deities, for the use of
sea-faring people.'  His master, Ptolemy Philadelphus,
was thought to have been very generous because he
allowed the putting of Sostratus's name in place of
his own.  But Sostratus's name seems to have been
put there by a trick, and it was finally found out.
Sostratus cut in the marble this inscription that had
his name; but what did he do but cover it with plaster!
In the lime he traced the name of the king.  How
pleased Ptolemy must have been to see his name there!
The lime, though, crumbled finally, and the king's
name crumbled with it, and the tricky architect's
inscription came out into notice.  This lighthouse was
built about three hundred years before Christ.

"In later years the tower of Dover Castle was used
as a lighthouse.  It was called Caesar's Altar.  Great
fires of logs were kept burning on the top.  This was
before the time of the Conquest, so called in English
history.  Then at the end of the sixteenth century
a famous lighthouse a hundred and ninety-seven feet
high was built at the mouth of the Garonne in France.

"About fourteen miles off Plymouth are the
Eddystone Rocks.  They are very much exposed to
south-western seas.  One light-builder was Winstanley,
and he was at his work four seasons, finishing in
1698.  The lighthouse was eighty feet high.  Made
stouter and carried higher afterward, it was almost
a hundred and twenty feet high.  It stood until
November 20, 1703.  A very fierce blow of wind occurred
then, and the tower was wrecked by the storm.  Two
grave mistakes were made.  Its shape was a polygon,
and not circular.  Waves like to have corners to butt
against, and these should therefore be avoided.  It
was highly ornamented for a lighthouse, and
ornaments are what winds and waves are fond of.  It
gives them a chance to get a good grip on a building
and bring it down.--In 1706 one Rudyerd thought
he would try his hand, and he did much better.  The
tower was built principally of oak; yet when finished
it stood for forty-six years, fire bringing it down in
1755.  Its form commended it, for it was like the
frustum of a cone, circular, and was without fancy
work for the waves to take hold of.--In 1756
Smeaton began to build at Eddystone his famous
tower.  He was the first engineer who built a
sea-tower of masonry and dovetailed the joints.  The
stones averaged a ton in weight.  He reduced the
diameter of the tower at a small height above the
rock.  He reasoned about the resemblance of a tower
exposed to the surf and an oak tree that faces the
wind.  That has been shown not to be good reasoning;
and looking at the shape of his tower, I should say
the idea would not stand fire--or in this case water;
for if at a small distance above the rock you reduce
the diameter of the tower very much, it gives the
waves a good chance to crowd down on the sides of
the tower.  However, Smeaton's tower stood a good
many years.  Its very weight enabled it to offer great
resistance to the waves, and weight is one thing we
must secure hi a tower, avoiding ornament and all
silly gingerbread work.  In 1882 a new tower was
built in place of Smeaton's."

The light-keeper then gave some details of our lighthouse
service.  His paper deeply interested his auditors.

Subsequently Annie Fletcher asked, "What is that
ringing like the sound of a little church-bell?"

"Then your ears were quick enough to catch it?"
replied the keeper.  "The window, too, is up, and so
you could hear it.  That is a bell-buoy at a bad ledge
off in the sea."

"A bell-buoy?" asked Annie.

"Yes.  It is a frame from whose top is suspended
a bell.  The bell is fixed, while the tongue, of course,
is movable.  The buoy floats on the water--fastened,
you know, to the rocks beneath; and as the waves
move the buoy the bell moves with it, and rings
also--like a cradle rocking!"

"The buoy is the cradle, and the bell is the baby
in it," suggested Dave.

"And waves are the mother's hand rocking the
cradle," added May Tolman.

"Mother's hand--that is, the ocean--is pretty rough
out there sometimes," said the light-keeper.  "In a
storm, when the wind brings the sound this way, the
baby cries pretty loud."

"It squalls," declared Dave.

"I'd like to see that bell-buoy," said Johnny
Richards.

"Should you?" replied the keeper.  "Well, the
sea is smooth, and we can all go easily in two
boats.--James, you manage one, and I'll cap'n the other.  It
won't take more than twenty minutes to row there."

The two boats now commenced their journey.

The two boats from the lighthouse were quickly at
the bell-buoy.  It was a bell hung in a frame, which
was swung by the waves.  It was an object of deep
interest to the visitors, and they lingered about it,
and then rowed back to the lighthouse.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THAT OPEN BOOK`:

.. class:: center large

   \IX.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *THAT OPEN BOOK.*

.. vspace:: 2

Toby Tolman, keeper of the light at Black
Rocks, sat by the kitchen stove in this lighthouse
on the frothing, stony rim of the sea.  He liked
the seclusion of this kitchen in the strong rock tower.
He liked to hear the steady beating of the clock--"tick,
tick, tick, tick."  He liked the feeling, too, of
the warm fire, and especially on this cool, windy day.
True it was August, but then the wind was blowing
from the north-west as if from an ice-floe up in Alaska,
and the air was chilly.  As he glanced out of either
of the two windows--the deep recessed windows in
the kitchen--he saw a cold, angry sea broken up into
little waves, each seeming to carry a white snow-flake
of the size of the crest of the wave.  The distant
ships, too, had a cold look, as if they also were
snowflakes.

"A cool day," thought the light-keeper; "and the
fire feels good."

While he was in the kitchen Dave was up in the
watch-room, hunting in the little library for a history
he meant to read, in accordance with a plan suggested
by the keeper, "a little every day, and to keep at it."

Mr. Tolman had a book in his lap--"The best book
in the world," he said to himself.  It was his big-print
Bible, and especially did he rejoice in that sense of
protection, its promises give on days like this, when
he heard the wind rushing and storming at the
window, suggestive of the wild tempests that might blow
any hour.

Just this moment the keeper was not reading.  He
was thinking, and the Bible was the occasion of his
meditation about Dave Fletcher.

"I don't see Dave reading his Bible much," he said
to himself; "and I don't believe he cares very much
about prayer--acts that way, at any rate.  I should
like to help him; but how?"

He called Dave before his mind, this brown-haired,
blue-eyed boy, with his quiet manners and methods,
but, as the keeper put it, "loaded with a lot of grit."

"Yes, I should like to help that boy," continued
the keeper in his thoughts.  "I would like to
influence him to be a Christian; but how, I wonder?  He
is one of that kind of self-reliant chaps you feel that
he had rather find out a thing himself than be told of
it.  He doesn't want me, I know, to tell him all the
time about his duty, and yet--yet--I should like to
influence him, and I wonder how?"

Of course, there was one's example first of all.

"Try to do what I can here," thought the keeper.
"I might speak to him, though I don't want to run
the thing into the ground.  Well, I shall be
guided."

The thought came to him, "Now there is a bit of
a thing I can do which certainly won't do harm."

The thought was just to leave his Bible open on
the kitchen table.

"Perhaps he may see a verse," thought the keeper,
"and it will set him to thinking."

After that on the table would lie the keeper's Bible
turned back to some impressive chapter.  Dave would
have been uneasy if in contact with some styles of
religion, but such a kindly natured, sunny, generous,
and tolerant soul as Toby Tolman he could not find
disagreeable.  Toby's religion was never obtrusive,
never unpleasantly in the way of people; though
always prominent, out in open sight, it was the
prominence of the sunshine, of a bird's happy singing, of
nature on a spring morning.  Dave felt it, but he was
a silent lad over important subjects.  He was different
from his sister Annie.  If her soul were stirred by
any profound emotion, she must in some way give
expression to it.  Dave, though, would look very
serious and continue silent.  His mother, who knew
him so well, said that Dave felt most when he said
the least, and the hours of his greatest stillness were
to her the surest signs of an intense activity within.

"Dave is fullest when he seems to be emptiest,"
Mrs. Fletcher would say.  Because now-a-days at the
light he would often have long seasons of silence, was
it any sign of mental occupation?

"I don't think I understand that boy yet," was
Toby Tolman's thought.  "He is thinking about
something, I know."

It was a day near the close of Dave's stay at the
lighthouse that the keeper said in the morning,--"Beautiful
day!  Everything just as calm!  It seems
as if it would stay so always, but it won't."

How the sea might rock and roar in twenty-four
hours!  The lighthouse was very peaceful.  The
morning's work was despatched promptly, and the
tower was very quiet.  With any rocking, roaring sea
would come a change in the life of the tower.  There
would be hurrying feet, and the fog-signal would
shriek out its sharp, piercing warning.

The flow of life in nature, though, out on the sea,
up in the sky, was undisturbed all that day, and in
the tower of the fog-signal the machinery stirred not,
while the light breeze playing around the mouth of
the fog-trumpets aroused no answering blast.  It was
peaceful on the sea and in the tower.  And yet in
the light-keeper's own bosom it seemed that afternoon
as if an ocean tempest had been evoked and was
suddenly raging.  About three Dave, who chanced to
be in the storeroom of the tower, heard a voice outside.

"There's some one down at the foot of the ladder,"
thought Dave.  "I will see who it is."

He went to the door of the signal-tower and looked
down.

"Ho! that you, Timothy?  Coming back?" said Dave.

Down in a boat lightly resting on the smooth, glassy
water was Toby Tolman's assistant, Timothy Waters.
Dave knew that Timothy was coming back very soon,
and he thought that Timothy might have concluded
to anticipate the date appointed for his return and
resume work now.

"Not just yet," replied Timothy.  "Get the cap'n
soon as you can.  I won't come up.  Spry, please."

The keeper was quickly at the door.

"What's wanted, Timothy?  Coming up, are you not?"

"Wish I could, cap'n, but I want to take you to
town.  Your--is--very--"

The sea heaved just then sufficiently to disturb the
speaker's balance and also to interfere with his
message.  There he stood, trying to steady himself by
the help of the mooring-rope and then looking up
again.

"What?  who?" asked the keeper.

"Why, your granddarter May, cap'n," replied
Timothy.  "She is very sick.  They don't know that
she will live.  She has been begging to see you, and
if you could come a few hours I will get you back
again all right afterwards."

"I will be with you right off."  The keeper turned
to Dave: "You heard that.  It's ugly news.  Now if
I go, can't you light up and watch till half-past eight?
I'll be back, sure.  Don't worry.  It will be a quiet
night; no sign just yet of any change in the weather."

"Oh yes, Mr. Tolman; that is all right.  You go.
I would if I were you.  I will look after things.  I
can handle them."

"I think you can; and I shall be obleeged to you.
My, my! this is sudden.  Wasn't looking for May's
sickness."

He was quickly in the boat with Timothy Waters;
and then Dave watched the two men pulling stoutly
on their oars and making quick progress landward.
The boat turned the corner of a bluff projecting
into the harbour and disappeared.  Dave stepped
back into the lighthouse, and sat down beside the
kitchen stove.  It was very peaceful there.  The
clock ticked as usual on the wall; and on the table,
lying open, as if laid down a moment ago by the
keeper, was his Bible.  Dave glanced at the opened
pages a moment.  As his eyes slipped down the line
of verses he noticed such assurances as these:--

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most
High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty....
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night....
For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
to keep thee in all thy ways.  They shall bear thee
up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a
stone."

He lingered a moment looking at these passages,
and then turned away.

"I will go upstairs," he said, "into the lantern,
and make sure that everything is ready for the
lighting at sunset.  That's sudden about May
Tolman," he began to reflect.  "Why, I seem to see
her going up and down these stairs the day she was
here, so full of life."

He could hear her voice; he could see her black,
glowing eyes, that had a peculiar fascination for Dave.

"Sorry," he said.  "That's real sudden.  Things
do happen quick in this life sometimes."

Dave felt unusually sober that day.  If he had
told all his thoughts to any one, he would have
confessed to a singular soberness of feeling for some time.

He had been shut up for several weeks with a
man whose religion, without any pretence, any show,
and any peculiarities, controlled his life, and came
prominently to the surface in everything.  Dave felt
his sister's religious influence at home; but there were
influences interfering with it and partly neutralizing
it.  Dave Fletcher's mother was too busy, she assured
herself, to attend to religion; and Dave's father
declared--also to himself--that he did not "feel the
need of it."  "I am as good as my neighbours; and
I guess that will do," he said.  He quoted in his
thoughts Dave's lack of interest, saying, "There is
Dave, good boy; and he takes his father's view of
things."

But here at the lighthouse Dave declared that
he was "cornered."  Here was a simple, humble,
unselfish life living in communion with his heavenly
Father, bringing that presence down to that lonely
tower in the sea, and filling it, and surrounding the
boy who was the light-keeper's companion.  No
neutralizing associations here.

"It sets me to thinking," declared Dave, as he
climbed the successive stairways to the lantern the
afternoon of the keeper's absence.  "And May
Tolman's sickness--that is sudden.  Nothing is certain.
Well, we must just look after matters right around
us.  One can't give his thoughts to all these
possibilities of accident.  I'll just remember that I am a
keeper of a lighthouse."

Keeper of a lighthouse!  The moment he uttered
this thought to himself there settled down upon his
shoulders a new and serious weight of responsibility.
He began to realize that for several hours he must
carry the burden of a keeper's duties.  He must look
after the fog-signal, if a dusky veil of mist should
suddenly be dropped from the sky and curtain off
both the sea and the land.  If there should be any
accident upon the sea in the neighbourhood of the
lighthouse, where the keeper might be expected to
give any aid, Dave must render that help.  When
night came, or sunset rather, he must light the lamp
in the lantern, and he must watch it, and see that for
the sake of the many vessels upon the sea this light
burned with steady lustre.  Upon just a boy's
shoulders how heavy a care seemed to be pressing down!

"I can stand it," he said, in pride and confidence.
The very pressure of the responsibility aroused within
him a corresponding measure of strength.  However,
it did not lessen the shadow of that sober thinking in
which he often walked nowadays.

"I'll take that history I am reading," he said on
his return from the lantern, "and get over a good
number of pages to-day."

He read until supper-time, but somehow his thoughts
did not seem to stay on his book.  They were like
birds on the telegraph wires along the railroad
track--flying off and then alighting again, only to lift
their wings and beat the air in another flight.

"A long afternoon!" he said finally, laying down
his book.  "I am glad it is tea-time."

How lonely the kitchen began to seem!  The rattle
of his knife and fork, the clink of his spoon, the
occasional clatter of dishes, usually such pleasant sounds
to a hungry man, now sounded lonely and harsh.

"Don't like eating by myself," declared Dave.
"Glad tea is over.  Wonder when Mr. Tolman will
be here?"  He looked at the clock and said, "I
believe he thought he should be back by half-past
eight.  I wonder how May Tolman is getting along.
Poor girl!"

The sun seemed that night a longer time than
usual in setting, as if it were an invalid, and there
must be a very deliberate and lengthy bundling up
in yellow blankets.

"At last the sun is about going down," said Dave.
He was now up in the lantern, match in hand.  He
looked off through the broad windows of glass upon
the surface of the sea, growing calmer and more
shining in the west; but in the east its lustre had faded
out, and there was a great expanse of dull, heavy,
lead-like shades.  Two fishing-boats were creeping
into harbour.  The surf on the bar rolled lazily, as
if it would like to go to sleep, even as the sun.  A
schooner was creeping along the channel, its sails
hanging in loose, flapping folds.

"There goes the sun!" thought Dave, watching
the disappearance of the last embers of its fires below
a blue hill.  He turned with relief to the lamp,
removed its chimney, kindled its wick, replaced the
chimney, and then carefully adjusted the flame.

"There--that is done!  Now do your duty, and
burn all right," was Dave's direction.  Rising, he
looked away, and saw that in other lighthouses their
keepers had kindled guiding tapers, burning slender
and silvery in the still lingering daylight.

"Everything here is all right, I believe," said Dave,
looking about the lantern.  "Holloa! what is that
up there in the corner?  A cobweb?  Guess I must
take it down.  Don't want the window to have that
thing up there.  Can't reach it.  I will get a little
box down in the watch-room.  That will elevate me."

When he had brought the box, standing on it he
saw that the web was on the outside of the lantern,
and he went without to remove the film from the
glass.

"There!" he said, reaching up to the corner of the
window as he stood on the box.  "Come down here.
Don't have cobwebs on the windows of this lantern."

He now turned about, and chanced to face the tall
red pipes projecting from the roof of the signal-tower
with their trumpet-shaped mouths.

"Is one of those pipes damaged?" wondered Dave.
"Afraid so.  I must take a sharper look at that."

At the foot of the railing of the parapet he placed
the box, and from that elevation, leaning his arms on
the railing, inspected as closely as he could the
fog-signal.  This parapet for timorous people was an
ugly spot.  When the wind blew hard it was not
easy to maintain one's footing outside the lantern.
One could cling to the railing, which was firm, but
it consisted only of an iron bar resting on upright
iron rods three feet apart.  There was no danger of
a fence-break, but the gaps between the iron rods
were wide and ugly, and if one should chance to drop
on the smooth stone floor and just tip a
little--over--toward--the--edge--ugh!  One did not like to
think of that fall down--down--into the sea--perhaps
upon the Black Rocks when the tide was out.
Toby Tolman had told Dave that for a long time he
did not care to go near the rail about the lantern
and stand there a while, as it made him "nervous;'
but he had ceased to be a "land-lubber," and could
now face, sailor-like in confidence, any quarter of the
sea and sky, just clinging to that little rail.  Dave
had felt pleased with his steadiness of nerve when he
found he could look over that rail and then down
upon the whirling sea without very much trepidation.

"Shouldn't like to have a dizzy fit when I was
looking over," he said.  "No danger, though."

He repeated this as he now stood on the box planted
at the foot of one of the iron supports of the rail,
and continuing to rest his arms on the rail, inspected
closely, as already said, the fog-signal.  Suddenly his
arms slipped, and over the horrible edge of that
narrow little railing he found himself going.
Sometimes we compress years into moments apparently.
We go back, we go forward, we gather it all up into
the thought of a very brief now.  But oh, how vivid!--like
all the electric force in a great mass of cloud
concentrated in one dazzling, blinding lightning-stroke.
As Dave felt that his body was sliding over
that rail, he seemed to realize where he had been in
the past.  He thought of his parents--his home--Uncle
Ferguson at Shipton--how it was that he came
to the lighthouse, and then he seemed to realize
vividly his situation there in the lighthouse: that
he was there as the responsible keeper just then;
that the safety of many vessels at sea all relied on
the thoroughness of his watch; and yet he was sliding
over that rail, going down toward the waves, the
rocks--he dared not look toward them!  He could
see only this one thing between him and death:
beneath his hands was an iron support of the railing.
There was no other object he could grasp for three
feet on each side of him.  It is true there was the
granite rim of this lantern-deck, so called sometimes,
but he could not grasp it.  His hands would slide
over it.  Just that iron stanchion was his hope, and
as he was sinking down he convulsively clutched at
it, caught it, clung to it--shutting his eyes as if
blinded.  He dared not look anywhere until he felt
that his grasp was sure, and then he somehow worked
himself back, up, over the railing, and the whole of
his body was on the lantern-deck again.  He crawled
into the lantern, shut the door, and threw himself on
the floor weak as a baby.

"Horrible!" was his one word.  There he lay
thinking.  What if he had gone down into that
yawning pit of the sea!  When would they have
found his body?  Horrible! horrible!  When he
was steady enough he slowly crept down the stairs.
He entered the kitchen.  It had seemed as if
everything threatened to fall when he was in danger of
going down into the sea--lantern, watch-room,
lighthouse--all into the merciless sea.  But here was the
kitchen.  No change here.  It was so quiet, so
restful.  A lamp burned on the table.  The fire
murmured in the stove.  The clock sang its cheerful
little tune of a single note.  And there was the old
light-keeper's Bible.  It still lay open, its pages
shining in the lamp-light, and there were the
promises of the psalm Dave had already noticed.  What
did it say?  "They shall bear thee up in their hands,
lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."

Dave started.  Up on the high lantern-deck had
any mighty angel stepped between him and death,
lifting him back on the floor of stone?  Who could
say it was not so?  Dave sat down in a chair, and
then bowed his head and rested it on the table.
Here was God, the kindest, dearest being in the
universe, Dave's great Father, from whose arms he had
been turning away, trying to avoid them; and now,
up on the lofty parapet, they had been held out,
restraining him, saving him.

"Oh, I can't go on this way any longer," thought
Dave.  "And I *won't*, either!  If God will only
have me--will only--"

He fell on his knees.  What he whispered to God
he never could recall.  He only knew that he felt
very sorry that he had been neglecting God--pushing
away the arms reached out to him and feeling after
him.  He murmured something about gratitude,
something about forgiveness.  Then he was conscious
of a surrender, of sliding down--not into a horrible
pit from the lighthouse parapet, but into arms tender
yet strong, that went about him, that bore him up,
that held him.  How long he stayed there he knew
not.  Some time he arose, and went upstairs to see if
the lantern were all right.  Its light burned steadily,
vividly, hopefully.  He looked out on the lantern-deck.
There was the box still on the floor.  With a shudder
he took it in and went downstairs again.  Then he
prayed once more, and said aloud the words, "They
shall bear thee up in their hands, lest at any time
thou dash thy foot against a stone."  He was so
thankful for this night's deliverance, so sorry for his
forgetfulness of God in the long past!  He rose to
read again.  He heard a step at last in the passage-way
between the fog-signal tower and the lighthouse,--a
heavy, echoing step, now in the tank-room, then
on the stairway to the kitchen.

Dave sprang up to meet the keeper, and he held
the lamp in the shadowy stairway.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Tolman."

"Same to you.  Here I am, all right, you see.
Glad I went."

"How is May?"

"Better.  Yes, thank God, she is better.  There
was a sudden change, and the doctor has hope.  She
has been in a pretty hard place, but I think she is
out of it."

"Good!  That's the way I feel myself."

"What!"  The light-keeper looked at Dave for an
explanation, but Dave was silent.  He could not tell
everything at once, or even a little to-night.  The
keeper went to the table, saying to himself, "He
meant May when he said that.  Ah!" he thought,
"my book is turned round.  Guess Dave has been
reading this.  Good!  I thought he would get to it
some time."

That was a very peaceful night whose hush was
on the great sea, on the surf gently rolling along the
bar, and in the lighthouse tower.  The deepest peace
was in Dave Fletcher's soul.

Dave's stay at the lighthouse was exceedingly brief
after this event in his life.

"I am really sorry to have you go," said Toby
Tolman the day that Dave left.  "I shall miss you.
I will take you up to town, as Timothy has come
back."

Dave received his pay from Timothy, for whom he
had acted as substitute, and then with the keeper left
the lighthouse.

The journey to Shipton over, Dave quickly walked
to Uncle Ferguson's, and was welcomed warmly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CHRISTMAS GIFT`:

.. class:: center large

   \X.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *THE CHRISTMAS GIFT.*

.. vspace:: 2

Christmas was approaching--Christmas with
its white fields, and its skies that seem to part
like the opening of doors in a big blue wall, and from
it issue the sweet songs of the Bethlehem angels.
Still more acceptable is it when our souls seem to
open like doors that fly apart, and out to our
neighbour and all souls everywhere go assurances of peace
and good-will.

To Dave Fletcher and Dick Pray Christmas meant
an end of school-days and a return home.

"You will come and see us 'fore you go," was Bart
Trafton's meek request to Dick and Dave when he
met them in the street.  Dick made the first call,
just three days before Christmas.  Things did not
have a festival appearance in the Trafton home that
day.  Gran'sir was lying on a lounge not far from
the fire, and his cough was shaking him harder than
ever.  Bart, just before Dick's call, had been down
on the shore of the river to see if the last tide
had remembered the poor, and deposited any more
drift on the beach.  He brought back only a puny
armful, and this armful he divided between the oven
and the fire, the first half to dry and be ready to
start up the flames which the other half would be
quite sure to put down and almost put out.  Granny
had been calling at a neighbour's, to borrow timidly
a little tea, and met Dick just outside the door of the
Trafton home.  Such a difference as there was
between youth with its ruddy cheeks and bright eyes,
between plenty with its cheerful and contented spirit,
and poor old Granny Trafton!

"Bartie wanted me to call," said Dick.

"Come in, come in," said granny, hospitably.  "We're
poor folks, but we're glad to see people."

When Dick went away he said to himself, "'Poor
folks,'--they're all that.  I wish something could be
done for them."

Dave made his call, and he left the house saying,
"Something must be done."

The two callers met in the street the day of Dave's
call, and the same thought was in their minds.

"Dick, see here.  Those Traftons are real poor,"
said Dave.  "I wonder if we couldn't get them a
little something for Christmas."

"Dave, that very thought was in my mind, and I
wanted to speak of it.  Come on.  It's done."

Hardly done; but that was Dick's way, and when
a soul may be timid and discouraged, that confident,
self-assured style in another is very strengthening.

"Let's see.  There is no other way than to go
right round and ask our friends.  I know they will
give something, Dick."

"Hold on, hold on, Dave.  That is a slow way,
Let's make a dash and capture the enemy at once.  I
will pick out some millionaire--"

Here Dick turned round as if to see which
"millionaire" he would select from all of Shipton's wealthy
residents.

"Yes," he continued; "I will look after that.  Don't
you give yourself a moment of uneasiness on that
score.  I will pick out some rich fellow, tell him
what he ought to do, and bag the game on the spot.
There!"

Dave laughed.  He knew Dick's style thoroughly.
At the same time it did give one like Dave, who
shrank from begging, new courage to have Dick talk
so boldly.

"Let's see, Dick.  It is now Monday.  We might
meet on Wednesday at your cousin's store, and find
out how we stand, and send our things to the
Traftons on Wednesday afternoon; and Christmas is on
Thursday, you know."

"Dave, don't worry about the wherewithal."  Here
Dick, with a very solemn air of assurance, looked
Dave steadily in the eye.  "I purpose to bag a
millionaire and make him do his duty, Dave Fletcher."

The two friends laughed, shook hands, and
separated.  Dave listened as he was about turning a
corner of the street, for he heard somebody whistling.
It was Dick whistling, in a loud, bold, cheery way.

"Well," thought Dave, "I'll make a beginning now.
I will speak to Aunt Nancy soon as I get home."

Aunt Nancy was stoning raisins in preparation
for a Christmas baking.

"Will I give something to the Traftons?  Oh,
certainly.  I expect a good warm blanket would be
just the thing for gran'sir, and I'll give that as my
share.  *My* share, remember.  Your uncle must give
his mite.  I tell ye, David," said Aunt Nancy in a
whisper, "your uncle has some first-class Baldwins
down in the cellar.  Just touch him upon those."

"I will, aunt, thank you."

And next, would the home of James Tolman give
anything?

"Pies and potatoes; you can count on us for some
of both kinds," said Mrs. Tolman.

The next place was the home of the light-keeper,
Toby Tolman, when ashore.  His wife was dead, and
a widowed daughter and her only child, May, lived
in his house.  He preferred to keep up the home,
although personally there but a very little of the
time.

"Should we like to give anything?  Of course," said
the keeper's daughter; "that is what Christmas is
for.  Only last week I heard father say we could
give some wood off our pile, for he calculated we had
more than enough to carry us through the winter."

"Don't you let young folks help?" asked a silvery
voice, sending at Dave an arch look out of two
penetrating black eyes.  "You must not think I am an
invalid and past helping, if I was so sick last summer.
Now I can just go round in the neighbourhood and
get together some eatables, I know, and perhaps
clothing that might do for Bart."

"That would be splendid," said Dave, stirred deeply
by those black eyes, and wishing that in every house
visited he was the individual of whom May Tolman
would solicit.

When Dave brought these donations into one collection,
he found not only the blanket for gran'sir but
a shawl for granny.  There also were clothes for
Bart, and any amount of things for the Christmas
dinner.

The next point was how to get them taken up to
the Traftons.  For the clothing and eatables Dave
borrowed Uncle Ferguson's cart, but for the wood only
James Tolman's waggon would answer.  That procession
of two teams, the waggon and the cart, had a
Christmas look that would have been recognized anywhere.

"Whoa-a-a!" shouted Dave, as the procession neared
the boot and shoe shop kept by Dick's cousin Sam.
Dick was behind the counter waiting on a customer.
As he saw Dave entering he ran his hand through his
hair in a nervous, despairing style, but said nothing
until the customer had left.

"There, Dave, it is too bad, but--but--whose are
those teams out in the street?"

"Just things I picked up."

"And the wood?"

"Going to the same place."

"That's good.  Then I don't feel so bad."

"Well, anything you find, good, you know, for
Christmas, why, send it along."

"I shouldn't wonder, though, if--if--it might be
too late now; but--you have got something--if--I
should be too late--and I do believe I am too late.
Sorry.  Glad, though, I put you up to it.  I knew
you would attend to it."

With a triumphant wave of his hand, as if he were
permitting Dave to drive off with a donation that
Dick Pray had gathered, he accompanied Dave to the
door and then retreated to the counter.

"If that isn't Dick Pray all over!" said Dave.

It would be difficult to tell the feelings of joy
occasioned in the Trafton home by those gifts.

"Davie," said Bart, "I had a dream last night, and
I guess it is a-comin' true.  I thought I saw that ladder
that Jacob had a look at, you know, when the angels
were a-goin' up and down, and comin' down they had
bundles in their arms."

Dave entered the house, bringing in bundle after
bundle.  Bart thought the angels looked somewhat
like that.

"Hadn't you better try this shawl?" said Dave to
granny, who looked cold and purple.  And would
gran'sir be willing to be wrapped in the blanket?
The thin, worn consumptive responded with a glad
smile, and said in a whisper that he hadn't been so
comfortable since he was sick.  And the wood--how
it set that old stove to shaking and laughing and
glowing till its front seemed like a jolly face full of
sparkling eyes!  That is one good result coming from
a stove cracked everywhere in front.

Granny told the minister, Mr. Potter, two days
after, how all this generosity affected gran'sir.

"Why, sir, it made him just heavenly!  He cried
and laughed--it was so good to be warm, you know.
And he's softened so, sir.  I think it begun when
Bartie begun to read the Bible to him, and it has been
a-keepin' on, sir, a-softenin', sir--don't scold, you
know, or be harsh-like.  I--I--I--"  Here granny
buried her face in her apron and cried.  "I'm
afraid--sir--may be--he won't live--long--he's--softened
so--sir--he has."

It was nothing wonderful.  Like the warm breath
of the spring on the chilled and torpid flowers,
arousing them into the activity of bud and blossom time,
the thoughtful kindness of God's creatures brought
God nigh to gran'sir; brought the breath of his
benediction to gran'sir's soul, and gave him a new life.

"God has been so good--he draws me," gran'sir
said to granny an early day in January.  "It is--like
he's callin' me--and--I guess I'll go."

His going was so peaceful that to say when it was
would be like marking the spot where the current
crosses the line between the river and the ocean; and
yet his soul did cross from time, so short and
river-like, into the broad and boundless ocean of eternity.
People said it would be as well for the comfort of
granny and Little Mew, and even better, for gran'sir
they declared to be exacting.  They did not know
how it was.  Granny and Little Mew felt that they
were the exacting ones, for they wanted gran'sir to
stay.  Little Mew's soul was clouded by the shadow
of a thought that by the death of gran'sir his mission
in this world was very much abridged.  He was
tempted to wonder again for what God had sent a
little fellow like him into this world.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT SHIPTON AGAIN`:

.. class:: center large

   \XI.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *AT SHIPTON AGAIN.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Nothing for me?"

"Nothing."

"Sure?"

"Well--"

The postmistress, in response to Dave Fletcher's
anxious inquiry, looked again at a package of letters
she had been handling.

"Oh yes, here is something!  I didn't see it the
first time.  Beg pardon."

"All right.  I wasn't really expecting anything,
but it is so long since I have had a letter that I was
kind of hungry for one."

Dave took his letter from the postmistress and
walked away.

"Postmarked Shipton!" said Dave, looking at the
envelope.  "Don't seem to know the address.  Let's
break that and see what it says."

He glanced down at the name with which the
letter closed.

"James Tolman; what does he want?" wondered
Dave.  He then returned to the first line and began
to read:--

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR DAVID,--I have not forgotten that you were
in my Sunday-school class when in Shipton, and I felt
that I knew you well enough to ask you to take this
into consideration, whether you wouldn't like to come
and be my clerk.  I am in the ship-chandlery
business, and have two clerks.  One of them is going
away, and may leave me for good.  I have promised
to keep his place open for him three months.  At the
end of that time he may come back.  Now, if I ask
you to come for three months, I know--"

.. vspace:: 2

Dave crumpled the letter in his hand, thrust it
into his pocket, and springing into his waggon, cried,
"Get up there, Jimmy!  Don't know that you and
I will be travelling this road together much longer.
Get up there!"

"Jimmy" was urged at an unusual rate over the
road, and pricked up his ears in astonishment as his
master cried, "Faster, faster!"

"There, mother!" said Dave, when he entered the
Fletcher kitchen; "just what I wanted has happened."

"What is that?" replied Mrs. Fletcher.

"Read this, mother, and you will see."

"For three months, Dave, and perhaps no longer, it
means."

"Oh, well, it will be a stepping-stone to something,
if I have to leave it.  Just get started in Shipton
and I can go it."

"But you haven't read about the pay, Dave."

"Well, mother, the fact is I like the place--I mean
Shipton.  I love to be near the salt water and where
I can see the ships--"

"And the lighthouse--"

"Yes."

"And May Tolman," sang out a voice from the
adjoining sitting-room, and Annie Fletcher appeared
at the kitchen door, asking, "How is it, Dave?"

Dave felt it to be the wisest course to keep still
and blush.

In a few days he was ready to start for Shipton.
He called one evening to see some of his old
acquaintances, and the next day started for Shipton.

On arriving he reported for duty at the shop of
"James Tolman, Ship-chandler."  He was now
eighteen, and he felt that active life was beginning in
earnest.  The shop was an old one, and before James
Tolman's business days it had been kept by his father.
It was packed with all kinds of goods available for
ship-furnishings.  As one opened the door a scent of
tar issued, strong enough to make the most thorough-going
old salt say, "This seems like home."  There
were coils of rope of every size ranged on either side
of the passage-way.  There were capstans and
anchors and blocks and ring-bolts.  There were all
kinds of shining tin and copper ware for the cook's
galley.  There were compasses, and ship-lanterns, and
speaking-trumpets, and sheath-knives, and suits of
oiled clothing, and slouching "tarpaulins."  On stormy
days, when Dave from the back windows could see
that the waves in the river had stuck in their crests
saucy feathers of foam, it seemed to him as if he
heard the coils of rope creak in the store and the
suits of sailors' clothing rustle; and what wonder if
some old salt had waddled forward in one of those
stiff suits, and, seizing a trumpet, cried in ringing
tones to the pots and kettles hanging from the brown,
dusty beams, "Furl your top-sails."  It was a
pleasure to Dave when an old Shipton sea-captain might
heave in sight on stormy days, and, entering the shop,
take a seat by the crackling fire and tell of gales
round Cape Horn or in the Bay of Biscay.

"I believe I am cut out for this business," said Dave.

His former Shipton acquaintances were glad to see
him back.  Dick Pray for six months had been in
town, a clerk in his cousin's shop.  He now came to
bring his congratulations to Dave.

"Glad to see you, Dave," he said.

"Thanks, Dick.  How is business?"

"Oh, booming! booming!"

All business that Dick's magnificent abilities came
in contact with either had "boomed," or was "booming,"
or would "boom" very soon.  No tame word was fit
to describe Dick's business ventures.

And the boy who came shyly, timidly after Dick
was--Bart Trafton.

"You well, Bartie?" asked Dave.

"Oh, better!"

"Why?"

"Because you've got back," said the caller, with
snapping eyes.

"That's encouraging.  And granny, is she well?"

"Oh yes, when--"

He did not finish.  If he had completed his sentence,
he would have said "when father isn't at home."

The same day two other people were in the shop
whom Dave had met previously, though he did not
recognize them at once.  There stood before the
counter a rather tall man, wearing a tall hat and
closely muffled about the face, for the day was one of
cold blasts of storm.

"I want a good ship's lantern," said the customer.

"Yes, sir," replied Dave, ranging before the man an
array of lantern goods.

"You have come to be clerk?" asked the man.

Dave looked up more carefully, and saw that the
man wore spectacles.

"Yes, sir," replied Dave.

The man inquired the price of the lanterns, selected
one, and went out.

"Halloo! he has given me twopence too much!"
exclaimed Dave.

"That doesn't matter," said a man who was watching
through a window in the door the storm driving without.

"Oh yes, it does," murmured Dave.--"Johnny!"
he called aloud to a younger clerk in the counting-room,
"just look after things a moment while I go out."

Johnny came out into the shop, and Dave seized
his cap and ran after the customer.  The latter was a
fast walker, and was hurrying round a corner of the
street when Dave overtook him.

"See here, sir!  A mistake in the change.  I counted
it, and you gave me too much."

"Oh--ah!  Thank you!  I see you don't know me."

The man slipped down a scarf wrapped about his
face, took off his spectacles, and there was--somebody,
but Dave could not say who.

"Not so rough up here as down at the bar--in a
schooner, say."

"O--Squire Sylvester!"

"That's it.  I think I was too rough with you that
day, for I found out afterward you had nothing to do
with it."

"Oh, well, sir--I--"

"I just wanted to say that, and am glad you think
enough of another man's property, though only
two-pence, to chase after him and give it to him."

Then the tall man tramped on.

"It shows," thought Dave, "that he hasn't forgotten
what happened some time ago, and I suppose he had
been wanting to say what he got off to me.  I don't
harbour it against you, Squire Sylvester.  When a
man's property has been run off with, it would be a
wonder if he didn't say something."

When Dave returned to the store the man at the
door still stood there, looking out through the little
window.

"I think I know that chap's face," thought Dave,
"but I really can't say who it is."

The man was disposed to talk.  "Did you catch
the squire?" he asked.

"Oh yes."

"Did he take the twopence?"

"Oh yes."

"Catch him not take it!  The squire would hold on
to a halfpenny till it cankered if he could possibly git
along without spendin' it.  I don't believe in worryin'
yourself about sich people."

"Twopence didn't seem much, but then it wasn't mine."

"I see you don't mean to be rich?"

"I mean to be honest."

"And die poor?"

"That doesn't follow."

"Oh, it does 'em good--these rich fellers--to lose
a little now and then."

"But they ought not to lose it if we have it and
it is theirs."

"Oh, you are too honest.  Say, I see you don't
know me."

"Well, yes, I ought to know your face."

"I've let my whiskers grow.  I didn't have any the
last time you saw me.  Cut all these off," said the
man, lifting a big beard, "and it would make a big
difference.  Don't you remember Timothy Waters, at
the lighthouse?"

"Why, yes.  You Timothy?"

"Yes."

"And are you at the light now?"

"Just the same."

"How is Mr. Tolman?"

"Holdin' on.  Oh, he likes it!  You must come
and see us."

Having given this invitation, Timothy left the store.
Dave watched him as he moved down the street,
turning at last into a little lane leading down to the
wharves.  Then he thought of Timothy rowing his
dory down the river, tossing on the uneasy tide,
battling his way forward until he halted at the foot
of a great gray-stone tower in the sea.  Looking up
at the doorway of the tower, Dave saw the keeper's
familiar face.





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"Well, how goes the temperance fight, Dave?"
asked Dick one day.

"We are pushing it.  We have organized our
society, and are going to hold meetings."

"The fight," as Dick called it, was conducted on
the principles of peace; but if peaceable it was not
sleepy.  A series of meetings of various kinds had
been carefully planned, and of these one was a young
people's meeting.  All the exercises, like speaking and
singing, were to be conducted by Shipton's youth.
Bart expected to have a humble part in this meeting,
and say a few Scripture verses bearing on the sin of
liquor-drinking.  His father was at home, and Bart
did wish that in some way he could be persuaded to
go to this meeting.  There did not seem to be much
prospect of his attendance.  One day he received a
mortifying check to his course.  Having drunk up
all his money at the public-house, he was roughly
turned out of doors.  This time he realized the
disgrace of his situation; and the next morning, to
granny's astonishment, he did not visit the saloon.
To her still greater surprise, he did not leave the
house all day.  He even sawed and cut some wood
for the fire.  This was deservedly ranked as a wonder
in the history of the man.  When Bart returned at
night his father was upstairs, "lying down," granny
reported.

"Ain't that queer, granny?" whispered Bart.

"I haven't known anything like it, Bartie.  He's
been cuttin' more wood this afternoon.  P'raps he is
sick."

Not sick, but mortified and penniless.  To such
people publicity is not attractive.

"I don't know what it is," said granny, "but Miss
Perkins says she hearn there has been trouble down
in the saloon."

Miss Perkins was a gossip with a news-bag that
seemed to have the depth and roominess of the
Atlantic.

"Awful place, ain't it, granny, where they sell rum?"

Granny turned on him--turned quickly, fiercely.

"Bartholomew!"

She rarely addressed him that way.  When she
did she meant something serious.  Bart's timorous
face shrank before her sharp, fierce gaze.

"Bartholomew, I want you to promise never to sell
rum.  Put your hand on this Bible!"

"Oh, I--I never will sell."

"And you won't drink it?  Promise!"

"Never!"

It was like Hamilcar of Carthage taking his son
Hannibal to the altar, and there making him swear
eternal hatred to Rome.  Then Bart went softly out
of the room.

Into some refuge he desired to steal, tell God that
he, Little Mew, was weak; that he wanted to be taken
care of; that he did wish to get help somehow for
his father--help to be better--and he wanted to
remember granny.  Up over the steep, narrow, worn
stairway he stole into his little bedroom, that, small
and humble, had yet been a precious refuge to him,
and his bed had been a boat bearing him away across
waters of forgetfulness of poverty and hunger to the
restful isle of dreams.  If he could only forget now!
He could pray, and if prayer does not make forgetful
it makes restful.  He leaned against his bed and told
all his trouble to God--told him of his desire for his
father, how much he wished God would make his
father a new heart; how he wanted help for himself,
that he might be kind and patient.  It was touching
to hear his boyish outcries, as kneeling he pleaded
for one so weak, so lost, as his father.  Then he went
downstairs again.  The moment his feet were heard
on the stairs, Bart's father, who had been lying in
the dark on the side of the bed nearest to the wall,
arose, sighed, and went down also.  Bart was standing
in the little entry leading to the kitchen.

"Bart--I--want to be--"  The father stopped.

It was not so much anything he said, for he said
nothing definite, but it was his tone that encouraged
Bart, and he listened eagerly.

"I want to be a good father to you, Bart; God
knows I do."

What?  Bart had never heard such language before
from this parent with agitated voice and frame.  Bart
caught instantly at a hope that had just begun to
take shape.  Would his father go to the temperance
meeting with him?

"Father, your ship, they say, won't sail to-morrow;
and if it don't, will you go to the temperance meeting
with me to-morrow night?"

"Bartholomew, if my ship don't sail, then I will go
with you."

He turned and went upstairs again.

"O Bart," exclaimed granny, "let us pray that God
will keep the winds off shore and not let Thomas's
ship get to sea!"

The next day the winds still were unfavourable,
and Bart and granny looked at one another with
happier faces than they had been carrying ever since
Thomas Trafton's return.

"Granny, the wind is not fair yet," Bart would
exclaim, after eying the vane on the nearest church
steeple.  Granny would then take her turn, and go out,
her apron thrown over her head, and watch the vane.
At last they could say, "The ship won't go to-night."

When ever before had that vane been watched to
see if it indicated a wind that would keep Thomas
Trafton at home?

"Hear me say my verses once more," Bart whispered
to his grandmother; and assured that his contribution
to the evening's exercises was in readiness, he went
with his father to the temperance meeting.  Bart's
place was among the speakers, and they filled several
pews, their bright, hopeful faces lifted above the
railings of the pews like flowers above the garden-bed.
Bart's father was in the rear of the church.  Bart
was afraid to leave him at that distant, unguarded
point; but he had promised Bart faithfully to stay,
and not go out.  Was ever any attendant at a
meeting in a more discouraged, helpless mood than Thomas
Trafton?  He had been thinking, somewhat as he
was accustomed to think when off at sea and away
from temptation, that never again would he touch
liquor; but could he keep his resolution if he made
one?  He felt burdened with a weighty desire,
burdened with a sense of shame, burdened with a
conviction of weakness, burdened every way and always.

The meeting began.  Mr. James Tolman conducted
it, but only to call the names of those participating in
it.  The recitations were varied.  Several had quite
pretentious speeches, and others gave only a modest
extract from some appeal in poetry or prose.  There
were those who simply had Bible verses, and in this
section Bart Trafton had a place.  His verses were on
the sin of intemperance.  When his turn was reached
he came to the platform quite readily, and then turned
toward the audience.  He looked once, saw great,
bewildering rows of faces, and all his courage left
him.  He could not look again at those hundreds of
staring eyes.  He dropped his head, blushed, and
every idea he had taken with him to the platform
seemed hopelessly to have left him.  Like birds, those
verses had flown away, and how could he possibly
call them back from that sudden flight?  However,
he did catch one bird.  He could think of one
word--"Wine!"  He resolved to begin with that.  A decoy
bird will sometimes bring a flock about it, and if he
said that one word he might think of the others.
"Wine--" he screamed.  Then he waited for the rest
of the flock.  He shrieked again, "Wine!"  Once
more, "W-w-wine!"

People were now smiling to see that timorous,
blushing, stammering lad on the platform, and some
of the children broke out into an embarrassing titter.
Bart, turned in helpless confusion to Mr. Tolman.

"Forgot it," he whispered,

"Say something," said Mr. Tolman, in an encouraging tone.

Something?  What would it, could it be?  Bart
gave one timid glance at the tittering, gaping rows
before him, and feeling that he must say something,
gave the first words that came into his mind.  Annie
Fletcher had taught them to him.  Bart's voice was
sharp and high, and it pierced all the space between
Thomas Trafton and the platform, and the father
plainly heard the boy.

"'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in
heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'"

Some of the people wondered what that had to do
with intemperance.  Thomas Trafton did not wonder.
He heard nothing else.  He did not notice whether
Bart stayed on the platform or left it; he did not
notice who followed Bart; he heard only those
verses.  The pew was an old one, and when improvements
had been made in the church, this pew was not
touched, but, being so far away from notice, was left
undisturbed in all its odd and antique furnishings.
Thomas Trafton never forgot the exact place where
he sat and heard through his son's voice this short
gospel that came down from God's lofty throne of
love.  He would in later days come to this old pew
and gladly occupy it and recall this night of the
temperance meeting.  He would hear again the
invitation given in his boy's piercing voice, and again
would be repeated, though not as vividly, his
experience that night; for he had an experience.  It
seemed to him as if while sitting there burdened and
weary, yet willing, longing to find relief, One came
to him,--One who had in his brow the print of thorns,
and in his side the mark of a spear, and in his feet
the scar of driven nails.  Thomas Trafton met his
Saviour there, and into peace and strength came the
soul of the once drunkard.

Not long after this the west wind blew, its strong
wings beating fast and sweeping Thomas Trafton's
vessel far away to sea.  Very few knew of his
surrender to God, which brought a victory over his
appetite.  The minister of the church, Mr. Potter, knew,
and Dave Fletcher knew.





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When Dave Fletcher became a clerk with
Mr. Tolman, he knew he was taking the place of
another who might come back in three months, and
back he did come.

"Sorry, David, I haven't a place for you," said
Mr. Tolman.

"Well," replied Dave, "if there isn't a place here I
must find one elsewhere."

But where?  He knew that his father did not need
him at home, as he had already made plans for all
needed farm-work.

"I don't want to go home and be just a burden,
hanging round," reflected Dave.  "Then I must find
work here."

He talked over the situation with Dick Pray.

"What would I do, Dave?  Well," said Dick, putting
his hands deep down in his pockets, "I should
advertise and--wait."

"I mean to advertise, but I think I had better stir
round also."

"Just as well to say you want something--say it
loud and strong, you know--and then let others ask
what is wanted."

Dick did like to sound a trumpet, giving as loud a
blast as possible, and then let the world run up and
see what "Lord Dick" wanted.

"Oh, I shall advertise, and stir round also, though
I don't just fancy it, and I can't say what will come
from it."

And what did come the first day?

Nothing.

The second day?

Nothing.

The third day?

Nothing.

"It is getting to be fearfully tiresome," said Dave
the fourth day.  "I have inquired in all directions, but
I can't seem to hear of anything.  Oh dear!  I shall
always know after this how to pity folks out of work.
Well, I suppose I must keep at it.  If I stop, I shall
surely get nothing; if I keep at it, I may be successful.
Here goes for Squire Sylvester, though I don't
know why I should ask him."

He mounted the steps leading to the door of
Squire Sylvester's office, and hesitatingly entered that
impressive business sanctum.  Squire Sylvester was
standing at his desk biting the end of a lead-pencil,
and studying the columns of figures on the paper
before him.

"Squire Sylvester, do--do--you know of any vacant
situation in business?" asked Dave.

The squire looked up.

"Humph!  Nothing to do?"

"Can't find it, sir."

"Well, I wish I could find somebody to work for me."

"Have you anything?" asked Dave eagerly, thinking
how nice it would be to occupy a desk in the
squire's office and assist in the management of such
business enterprises as the building of ships or the
sailing of them.

"I have been trying to find somebody to cut up
some wood for me and stow it away, but I can't get
hold of any unoccupied talent."

Dave's countenance dropped.  It went up again,
though.

"It will pay a week's board, maybe," he said to
himself.

"I--I'll take that job, sir.  I know how to swing
an axe, and I'd rather be doing that than go loafing
about."

"Good!  I thought there was some stuff in you
worth having."

Dave disregarded this compliment, and asked,
"When shall I go to work?"

"Any time.  Saw is behind the chopping-block in
my shed, hung on a nail, or ought to be; and axe, I
guess, is keeping the company of the block."

"I will begin to-day.  There will be a comfort in
knowing I am doing something."

"That is a good spirit, young man; and let me assure
you if you stick to that style of doing things, some
day you will be able to take comfort--a lot of it."

The squire went to the window of the office when
Dave had left, and watched him cross the street in the
direction of the squire's home.

"I like that young chap," murmured the squire.

Dave found the house of his employer, left word at
the door that he was sent to look after the wood, and
went into the shed.

"Here is the chopping-block, and there is the axe,
and the saw is all right.  I will take my tools
outdoors, where my wood is," said Dave.

It was a day in early spring.  Snow still clung to
the corners of gardens, and hid away under the bushes,
and lay thick on the shaded side of buildings.  The
sun, though, was strengthening its fires every day,
and had coaxed a few bluebirds to come north, and
say that warm weather had surely started from its
southern home, and would be here in due season, though
a bit delayed, perhaps.  Two hours later, Dave's axe
was striking music out of the pieces of wood the saw
had first played a tune on; and it is that kind of
music that helps a man to feel independent and
self-reliant, contented and cheerful.

"Hollo! that you?" sang out a voice.  "How are
you, old man?"

Dave looked up, and saw Dick Pray nodding over
the fence.

"The old man has found work, you see," replied Dave.

"None of that sort for me," sang out Dick.

In about half-an-hour another voice was calling to
him across the garden fence.  This was not the flexible,
smooth, rounded voice of youth addressing Dave, but
there were the tones of an old man.  There was a
world of friendship, though, in this old man's
salutation, "How d'ye do? how d'ye do?"

Dave turned toward it, and there was the old
light-keeper, Toby Tolman.

"May I come in?" asked the light-keeper, approaching
the gate.

"Oh yes, sir, do!  Glad to see you."

The light-keeper came up the gravelled walk,
approached the pile, and said, "How much more of a
job have you got?"

"Oh, a couple of days."

"Well, then, do you want another?"

"Yes, sir.  But how did you know I was here?"

"May, my granddaughter, knew, and she told me.
I was at the house, you see.  My job for you is to go
to the lighthouse and be my assistant.  She told me,
and I said to myself, 'There's the man for me!'"

"You don't mean it!  Why, where's Timothy Waters?"

"Got all through."

"His time up?"

"Well, he went before he wanted to.  Wasn't just
particular in reckoning what belonged to others."

Dave recalled at once the little affair about the two
pennies.

"Who's at the light now, Mr. Tolman?"

"Oh, an old hand, who is just piecing me out at
this time when I need help.  He leaves day after
to-morrow.  Now, come!  I'm up here trying to look
somebody up to be my assistant.  Can't bring it
about at once; but if you'll go and stay a while I
think you'll get the berth, and I don't know of
anybody I'd like better to have."

"And I should like to come, too, and I will, just as
soon as I finish this job."

"Maybe the squire would let you off now."

"I daresay."

"I'd like to take you back with me to-day."

"And I'd like to go, but I'd better finish up."

"You're right, on second thought.  The squire
wouldn't hesitate a moment, I venture to say; but
then people sometimes grant us favours when at the
same time they say to themselves, 'I wish they hadn't
asked me.'  You stay and finish your job."

The second day after this the task was completed,
the saw going to its place on the nail behind the
chopping-block, and the axe finding quarters near by.

"There!" said the squire: "I don't know that I
ever paid for a job with greater satisfaction."

He was handling a roll of bills as he said this, and
handed one of these to Dave.

"It is too much, sir."

"Oh no.  That was a peculiar pile of wood, and it
took a peculiar kind of merit to get the better of it.
For ordinary wood," said the squire, his eyes blinking,
"I should only pay an ordinary price; but this wood
was something more than ordinary, and of course the
price goes up.  When I can do you a favour, you let
me know."

That day toward sunset a dory was gently tossing
at the foot of the lighthouse on Black Rocks.

"Hollo!" shouted Dave, looking up from the boat
and aiming his voice at the door above.

"Oh, that you?" asked the light-keeper, quickly
appearing in the doorway and looking down.  "My
man will be here in a jiffy and go home in your boat,
as we fixed it, you know."

Dave exchanged the boat for the lighthouse, and
the retiring assistant quit the lighthouse for the boat,
then rowing to his home.  Dave heard that night the
wind humming about the lantern, saw the friendly
rays beckoning from other lighthouses, heard the wash
of the waves around the gray tower of stone, and felt
that he had reached a home.





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In a month Dave Fletcher was established at the
light on Black Rocks as assistant-keeper--a
position that would bring him a far handsomer salary than
could any present clerkship at Shipton.  This berth
was not secured without a struggle by Dave's friends,
as several candidates were willing to take the duties
and profits of the place.

"You've got the place, though others wanted it,"
said the keeper, returning from town one day and
wiping his round, red face with his handkerchief.
"News came to-day.  I don't know but you would
have lost it, but they say a friend of yours interceded
and told them up and down you must have it any way."

"Who was it?"

"Somebody that said he had seen you run a saw
and knew you could run a lighthouse.  That's what
folks tell me he said."

"Oh, Squire Sylvester!"

"Yes.  Queer feller; but he isn't all growl, though
he does look like it, maybe."

Some time after this there were visitors at the light.
One was expected, the other was not.  The first was
Bart Trafton, brought by the light-keeper one soft,
sunny April day.  Bart was very much interested
in the lantern.

.. figure:: images/img-162.jpg
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   :alt: "Bart was very much interested in the lantern of the lighthouse."

   "Bart was very much interested in the lantern of the lighthouse."  *Page 159*

"Can I go up with you and see the lantern?" he
asked.

"Oh yes," said Dave, leading Bart up the iron
stairway that mounted from room to room.

"There!" said Bart, looking round on the glass
windows enclosing the lantern and the lamp in its
centre: "I think this is a dreadful interestin' place."

"I think so too, Bart."

"And what I think is interestin' is that lamp in
the centre.  Why, granny uses a lamp that, it seems
to me, is no bigger than that, but it can't throw
anywhere near such a light as that.  I saw your light
last night."

"You did? where?"

"From the hill behind our house.  I went up there
and saw it."

"I did not know that.  Then we could signal to
one another."

"Signal?"

"Yes, this way.  Supposing, now, I should hang a
lantern out on the side of the lighthouse toward the
land, toward your home, and you could see it: you
might take it as a sign that I wanted--well--we will
say--a doctor."

"I think I could see it with father's spy-glass; it
is real powerful.  Say, will you try it to-morrow
night?  You hang it out, and I will take father's
spy-glass and see if I can make out anything.  Then I
will send you word by the mail.  You don't think it
is too far from our house to the light?"

"Too far to see? oh no.  Now, I said a man
might want a doctor here.  I have often thought if
one of us was sick--and you know the keeper is
getting old--and if the other couldn't get off to bring a
doctor, it might be a very serious thing for the sick
man."

"Well, if you are in trouble and will hang out a
light, and I see it, I will tell the people, and they will
get to you."

Dave thought no more of this, but silently said, "I
wonder if I haven't something else interesting to show
the boy!  Yes, I have got it."

He went down from the lantern to the kitchen, and
took from its shelf the strange box of sandal-wood,
whose story Dave already knew.

The light-keeper now repeated to Bart the tale of
the drifting relic.  He held it to his ear.  Did the
boy think it was a shell--that it would murmur a song
of wave and cloud and the broad sunshine sweeping
down on lonely surf-washed ledges?

"It won't talk," said the light-keeper, beaming on
him.

Bart shook his head.

"I wish it would talk," thought the keeper.  "It
might tell about that man whom we picked up and
brought into the light, and who seemed to know something
about it.  I wonder if he will ever call for it!"

He spoke of it to Dave afterward.  The two were
up on the lantern-deck at sunset looking off upon the
sea.  The water was still and glassy.  It was heaving
gently, as if with the dying day it too was dying, but
feebly pulsating with life.  One vast surface of
shining gray, it gradually darkened till it was a mass of
shadows across which were drawn the lines of white
surf cresting the ledges.

"Several vessels in the harbour," said Dave.

"Yes: they have been coming down from Shipton
this afternoon; but the wind has all died away, and
they seem to have made up their mind to anchor there
to-night.  It is getting cool.  Perhaps we had better
go down," said the keeper, shrugging his shoulders.
While within the lantern he glanced at the lamp, and
then descended to the kitchen.  Without the twilight
deepened.  Out of the gloom towered the lighthouse,
bearing aloft its guiding, warning rays.  The keeper
was in the kitchen, trimming an old lantern which had
done him much faithful service.  That small visitor,
Bart, had gone with Dave up into the lantern, anxious
to see the working of the lamp.

The keeper lighted his lantern, and then started for
the fog-signal tower.  He was descending the stairs,
when he heard a cry outside of the lighthouse.

"Somebody at the foot of the ladder, I guess, wants
me," concluded the keeper, "and I will go to the door
and see who it is."

He went to the door, lantern in hand, and looked
down.

"Hollo, there!" sang out a man from the shadows
below.  "Shall I come up?"

"Ay, ay!" responded the keeper.  "Low water down
there, isn't it, so you can come up the ladder?"

"I guess so.  I will make fast and try the
ladder."

The keeper heard the steps of somebody on the
ladder, and then a man's form wriggled up through
the hole in the platform outside the door.

"I get up with less trouble to you than I did the
last time I was here," said the man.

The keeper looked at him.

"Ho! this you?" he asked.

"Nobody else."

It was the man who one day, when intoxicated, had
been rescued from the bar, and the next morning had
shown singular interest in the little box of sandalwood.

"Come up!" said the keeper, leading the man to
the kitchen.

"I have been some time coming, haven't I?"

"Better late than never.  Always glad to see people.
Take that chair before the fire, and make yourself at
home.  I did not know as I should ever see you
again.  You are a Shipton man?" asked the keeper
bluntly.

"Yes, I belong to Shipton; but then I am off about
all the time.  I think I have seen you on the street
there."

"I was thinking myself I had seen you, but I
couldn't say when, except that time you were at the
lighthouse."

"Have you got that box now?"

"Oh yes.  Here it is.  Nobody has come to claim it."

He took the box down from its shelf and placed it
on the table.

The keeper's companion said, "Now I will tell you
the story about that box, and this letter, too, will
confirm it."

As he spoke he took a letter from his pocket and
opened it.

"The man who wrote that was an old shipmate,
Grant Williams, a warm friend, and faithful too.  He
knew I had a weakness, and used to say he was afraid
his shipmate would get into the breakers.  He sent me
a letter from a foreign port; here it is.  You look at
it.  You will see that he gave me some good advice.
He laid it all down like a chart; but I was a poor hand
to steer by it.  'I expect to sail for Shipton in a
Norwegian bark,' he wrote (I think he was born in
Norway himself, but had been a long time in America),
'and I am going to get and bring my old shipmate
a present of a box of sandal-wood, and I shall pack a
few keepsakes into it.  I will put my picture in, just
to make it seem all the more like a present from me.
I will put your initials and mine on the under side of
the box.  I will leave it at Shipton with your father if
you are not there.  And now don't forget this: it is to
be a reminder of my desire that you should let liquor
alone.  When you see it, think of an old shipmate,
and look at my face you will find in the box.'  The
first time I saw the box was that morning after the
night you found me in a state that was no credit to
the one found.  I knew the ship had been wrecked,
and only that, and when I saw the face of my old
shipmate, and knew that he had been lost on the bar
where I came pretty near losing my own life through
what he warned me against, I--I--felt it.  I didn't
see how I could take the box until I was in a condition
to give some promise, you know, that I would be a
better man; and now I hope I am, God being my helper."

"Well, I think it is plain proof that you are the
one whom the man Williams meant, and the owner
of this box, if those are your initials on the
bottom--if--"

The keeper was about to ask the man for his name,
but the sound of a light step tripping downstairs
arrested their conversation, and both turned toward
the stairway.

It was Bart Trafton.  He looked up, stopped, started
forward, and exclaimed, "Why, father!"

"This you, Bart?" said Thomas Trafton.  "How
came you here?--My boy, Mr. Tolman.  My vessel is
off there in the stream, and while waiting for the
wind I just rowed over."

There they stood, side by side, Bart and his father,
while the keeper was rising to hand the box to Thomas
Trafton.  The lighthouse kitchen never presented a
more interesting scene than that of the reformed
sailor in the presence of his oft-abused child, taking
into his hands this gift, that had survived a wrecking
storm, to be not only a pledge of the friendship of the
dead, but to the living a stimulus to right-doing and
a warning against wrong.

Thomas Trafton rowed back to the vessel that
night.  Bart was carried to town the next day.  Bart
reached home at sundown, and first told granny about
the affair of the box as far as he had been able to
pick up the threads of the details and weave them
into a story; then he asked, "Where is father's
spy-glass?"

"Behind the clock, Bartie," said granny.  "What
do you want it for?"

"Just to look off," he said, seizing the glass and
bearing it out-doors.  Granny followed him into the
yard and there halted; for Bart was going farther,
already bestriding the fence.

"Where is that boy going?" wondered granny.

"Bartie!" she called aloud, "it is a-gittin' too late
to see things clear."

He was now mounting a hill beyond the yard.

"Back in a moment, granny!" he shouted.

She soon saw his figure standing out, clear and
distinct, against the western sky, and he was elevating
the glass.

"Too soon to see anything yet," he said, when he
returned.

"Where you lookin', child?"

"Off to the lighthouse."

"They haven't more than lighted her up."

"I know it.  I was too early."

"You want to see the light?  You won't have to
take a glass for that; you just wait."

"I want to see something else.  You come with
me, granny, when I go again."

"Sakes, child, what you up to?"

Later two figures crept up the hill, one carrying a
spy-glass.

"There, granny!" said the bearer of the glass.
"Now you look off to the light at Black Rocks, and
right under it see if you can't see another light--a
little one."

"La, child," declared granny, vainly looking through
the glass, "I can't see nothin'.  This thing pokes out
what there is there."

"Eh? can't you, granny?" replied Bart, levelling
the glass toward the harbour.  "I see the light.
And--and--I think--I see a--something else underneath.
Seems like a little star under a moon."

The next day this was dropped in the post-office:--

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR DAVE,--I saw your lantern, I know.  Did
you hang it out?  Your friend, BART."

.. vspace:: 2

Dave answered this in person within a week.

"I'm having a holiday," he said to granny--"off for
a day--and thought I would call.  I want you, please,
to say for me to Bart I got his note, and that I did
hang out my lantern the night that he looked for it."

"Now, did you ever see sich a boy?  He has been
up every night to look for that lantern, and he says
he feels easier if he don't see it."

"You tell him not to worry.  We are very
comfortable.  A person might live there a century and
nothing happen to them."

Notwithstanding this assertion about the safety of
century-serving keepers, Bart would sometimes steal
out in the dark and climb the bare, lonely hill.  Then
he would search the black horizon.

"There's the reg'lar light," he would say, "but I
don't see anything more.  All right!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STORM GATHERING`:

.. class:: center large

   \XV.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *THE STORM GATHERING.*

.. vspace:: 2

There was a tongue of land not far from the
lighthouse known as "Pudding Point."  How
long the water-trip to it might be depended upon the
state of the tide.  In the immediate vicinity of the
lighthouse there was, in the direction of this Pudding
Point, such an accumulation of sandy ridges that at
low-water the voyage was only a quarter of a mile.
At high tide all the yellow flats were covered, and an
oarsman must pull his boat across half-a-mile of water
to go from the light to the point.  Sometimes Dave
had occasion to visit Pudding Point.  A few houses
were there, and they might be able to supply an
article needed at the light, and that would save a trip
to Shipton.  One sunny morning Dave had rowed
over from the light, and was drawing his boat up the
sands, when he noticed a familiar figure striding along
a ridge beyond the beach.  It was a person of
handsome carriage, and one well aware of it.

"I should know that form anywhere," said Dave.
"Hollo, Dick!" he shouted.

Dick Pray came running down a sandy slope and
gave Dave his hand.

"I am trying to hunt up Thomas Trafton," said
Dave.  "I believe he has a fish-house around here,
hasn't he?"

"You'll find him on that ledge a little way back."

Dave hunted up the fish-house--a black, weather-beaten
box.  Thomas Trafton was spreading fish on
the long fish-flakes in the rear of his humble quarters.

"That you, Dave?" asked the fisherman.  "I
thought I saw you down on the shore a half-hour ago."

"I was over at the light half-an-hour ago."

"Then it was Timothy Waters."

"How so?"

"Don't you know that if one takes a back view of
you and Timothy, although he is really older than
you by half-a-dozen years, it wouldn't be easy to tell
you apart?  Let me see.  You are twenty-one?"

"So they say at home."

"Timothy is twenty-seven at least.'

"And I look like Timothy?"

"Rear view only, and I can only tell it is him if in
walking he throws his arms out.  You never do that."

"I am not anxious to resemble Timothy Waters.
I thought he was at sea."

"Off and on.  He is now, I suppose, in that craft
off in the stream."

"The *Relentless*?"

"That's the one.  I know I am glad to be out of
her.  My health improved steadily after quitting
her.  I am going to be at home, fishing, this
season."

"How do they all do at home?"

"Oh, comfortable."

"Bart is getting to be a big boy, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is.  He thinks a good deal of you.  Now,
you know that habit he got into once--"

"What was that?"

"Of taking my spy-glass and going out to look at
the lighthouse at night--"

"To see if I had hung out a lantern because we
were disabled--by sickness, you know, or something
of the kind?"

"That is it.  Well, his granny says he hasn't wholly
dropped it now.  She will see him go out, and when
he comes back she will say, 'Anything?'  'Nothing,'
he will say."

"Oh, I guess there never will be any need of his
looking."

"No, I s'pose not; but it shows his interest."

"Yes; I am thankful for that.--Well, let us have
a fish to broil; have come out for that."

Dave received his fish, paid for it, and very soon
turned away, striding off energetically in the direction
of his boat.

When Dave returned to the lighthouse, the tide,
gradually dropping, had uncovered the rocky
foundations, and the water was playing with the fringes of
seaweed all about the rocks.

"How gracefully that seaweed rises and falls!  Those
curves of its motion are very delicate.--Hollo! what
is that?" he asked.

Looking at the foundations, he saw in a crevice a
little object that was not a lump of rock-weed or a
rock, and what was it?

"A pocket-book!" said Dave, leaning out of his
boat and picking up this relic tightly wedged between
the stones.  "I'll look at that when I get up into the
kitchen."

Reaching the kitchen, he hastily opened the pocket-book,
noticed that it was empty, and then placed it to
dry on a shelf.  It was very peaceful in the kitchen,
and the stove purred and the clock ticked contentedly
and quietly as ever.  But where was the light-keeper? his
assistant wondered.

"Upstairs probably," was the thought in reply; and
yet this consideration, reasonable as it might seem at
the moment, did not dispose of the question wholly.
True, in a lighthouse, where one might say if a man
were not downstairs he must be upstairs, that he could
not be "out in the yard" or "in the cellar," Dave's
conclusion seemed to be correct.  He felt, however,
a peculiar sense of loneliness.  If Dave were a person
given to moods, if he were likely to be sombre, he
might have said it was only a fancy; but for one of
his temperament that was unusual.  Dave with reason
had been somewhat worried about his principal.  Toby
Tolman was growing old.  It had been in certain
quarters openly said that he was too old for his
position.  He had been such an efficient keeper, and he
had as his assistant a man so valuable, that no one
cared to make an effort to remove him from his
position.  The person who would probably be benefited
by any change, and would be invited to take charge of
the light, was David Fletcher, and he would not move,
for that reason, against his kind old friend.  Dave
had worked all the harder to fill up any deficiencies
on the part of his principal, and the principal would
doubtless have been invited to step out if his assistant
had not worked so hard to keep him in.  Often Dave
noticed an indisposition in the light-keeper to attend
to that fraction of the duties of the place falling to
him, and Dave rightly attributed the indisposition to
inability.  During the watch-hours belonging to the
keeper his assistant had sometimes found him asleep,
and when the rest-hours belonging to the keeper
arrived, he would unduly prolong his sleep in the
morning, and neglect duties to which he had hitherto
given prompt attention.  Dave also noticed that
Mr. Tolman lingered at an unusual length over his Bible.
It would be an exceedingly good sign if it could be
said of many people that they spent twice as much
time as previously with their Bibles; but when a man
usually giving to this habit an hour and a half may
take three hours, neglecting other daily duties, there
may be occasion for inquiry into the change.  The
light-keeper did not himself notice this peculiarity
about to be mentioned, and yet any one seeing the
passages read would have appreciated it.  The keeper
now found unusual comfort in the psalms that spoke
of God as a hiding-place, a refuge, a high tower.  Was
he like the mariner who sees the storm pressing him
closely and hastens to find the harbour where he can
let fall each straining sail, like the tired bird that
drops its wings because it has found its nest?

Dave had other reason for worry.  There were in
circulation mysterious stories that everything in the
administration of the lighthouse at Black Rocks was
not satisfactory.  There were sly whisperings that
goods belonging to Government were given out to
others by the keepers, but when, where, and why,
nobody said.  There was only the repeated story of
a mysterious disappearance of Government property.
Several friends of Dave tried to catch and hold these
rumours.  Catch them they did, but hold them they
could not.  They were like birds that you may think
are yours, but when you turn them into a room, lo,
they fly out of an open window in the opposite direction.

Thomas Trafton was very indignant.

"Look here!" he said with a reddened face to a
fisherman repeating some of these charges, "who told
you that?"

"Almost everybody."

"Name one."

"Well, Timothy Waters was one."

"Timothy Waters, a man that had trouble at the
light!  You wait before you believe the story."

"But others have said the same thing."

"Well, wait; I am going to track these stories to
their start."

Thomas Trafton imagined that he was a hunter, and
like one following up the trail of an animal, he
endeavoured to track these slanders back to their den.
Sometimes he would follow the accusations back to
Timothy Waters, and then somebody else would be
found to assert them, and so the trail would start away
again.  Amid the multitude of tracks, but without
evidence of their origin, this hunter from the Trafton
family was bewildered.  He mentioned the affair to
Dave, feeling that here was an innocent person whom
others were attacking, and yet he might be entirely
ignorant of the assault.

"I--I--don't want to make you uneasy, but I feel
friendly more than you can imagine," said Thomas,
"and I thought you ought to know about the stories
that are going round."

"Oh, I suppose people are always talking.  Life
would be dreadful dull if there wasn't something to
talk about; and if I save the world from dulness I may
flatter myself that I am doing some good."

"Oh, but it isn't just gossip."

"Isn't?" replied Dave, taking a hint from Thomas

Trafton's significant look more than from any language.
"What is it then?"

"Now, I don't believe it, mind ye.  I try to stop
it, but it is like trying to stop a sand-piper on the
beach without a gun.  Running after it don't bring it."

"Well, what is it?  I know you wouldn't believe
anything unfair, but I am bothered to know what it is."

"Why--and I thought you had better know it--they
say things belonging to Government are given
out from the lighthouse: 'misappropriated'--I believe
that is the word."

"Long word!  Well, who says it?" asked Dave sternly.

"Oh, I'm sorry to say I've heard a good many tell
it who ought to know better."

"It is all a lie!  Misappropriation!  That good
man Toby Tolman--as if he would do such a thing!
Why, any one with a head might know better.  Toby
never would do it!"

"Of course he wouldn't, nor you neither.  That is
not the p'int, but how to stop 'em?"

Dave was silent.  Then he broke out,--

"Who has mentioned it?"

Thomas mentioned the fisherman he had recently
confronted and rebuked.  Then he added,--

"I have tried to run the story down to its hole.  It
don't seem to start with him, for he says somebody
told him, and--"

"Who is that?"

"Timothy Waters."

"Indeed!"

"Now, I want to know how to stop the story."

"You let me think it over, Thomas.  I am much
obliged to you."

"I am real sorry to tell you," replied Thomas, "but
I thought you ought to know of it, and I'll stand by
you and Toby to--the last."

This conversation was only three days before Dave's
visit to Pudding Point.  Thomas had said if anything
new turned up he would report to Dave.  "Nothing,"
he had said to Dave during that call at the fish-house,
looking significantly at him.

"I understand," replied Dave, "and I have nothing.
All I can do is to grin and bear it."

To suit the act to the sentiment, he gave a smile
with compressed lips.  It was a rather grim smile.

Dave was thinking of the unpleasant subject
continually.  What added to his burden was the conviction
that he did not think it would be wise to tell his
principal, for he suspected--and he judged rightly--that
it would do no good, that it would only grieve
the light-keeper, and that this burden of grief he was
not just then in a condition to easily carry.

"I am acting for two," he said to himself, "and that
makes it all the harder.  If it were just one, just
myself, I could seem to tell what to do; but I think it
would do an injury to the old man to tell him now;
and what shall I do?  I guess I must take the advice
of that psalm to myself."

He had in mind the close of the twenty-seventh
psalm, read the night before: "Wait on the Lord: be
of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart:
wait, I say, on the Lord."  And this was Dave's
comment on the verse: "I can rest on that promise.  I
was not aware when a man didn't know what to do,
which way to turn, that this psalm could help and rest
one like that."

So Dave, like many pilgrims perplexed and tired,
came to the shadow of the mountain-promises of God.
and there comforted his soul in the assurance that God
thought of him, loved him, and would strengthen him.
He needed this comfort when he returned to the lighthouse,
after his visit to Thomas Trafton's fish-house,
and missed the keeper.

"I will go upstairs to find him," he said.

How hard and heavy was the sound of his footsteps
as he ascended the first flight of stairs leading from
the kitchen!  Dave went up as if he were carrying a
burden.  He pushed open the door at the head of the
stairway and looked into the keeper's room, anxiously
and yet timidly, as if desirous to find him and yet
afraid.

"Ah, there he is," thought Dave.

He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed.

"Is he asleep?" wondered Dave.  He stepped to
the bed.

"Yes, he must be asleep.  Shall I speak to him?"

He hesitated.  He wanted to wake him and make
sure that an ugly suspicion was without foundation.

He watched the old man's breast, and saw a movement
there as of a pulsation of the heart.  He held
his hand before the keeper's mouth.

"Yes, I feel his warm breath.  It must be sleep,
and yet--"

He paused.  He did not like to express in language
what he could not help in thought.

"I will not disturb him," he finally said, "for it
may be only just sleep.  I will wait, any way, till after
dinner."

Deferring and still suspecting, he went downstairs.
The kitchen had not changed, and yet it seemed a
different place.  The clock and the fire now made
discordant noises.  The sunshine that fell through the
window and rested on the floor seemed not so much
to bring the light as to show how empty and comfortless
the place was.  He felt lonelier than ever, this
man that people outside suspected of theft, who was
cut off from the sympathy of the man suspected with
him.  He was like one of the ledges in the sea, so
isolated, so much by itself, upon which the waves beat
without mercy, without rest.  In that hour what
society, sympathy, strength, he found in the psalms!--a
face to smile upon him, a voice to cheer, and a hand
to uplift.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STORM STRIKING`:

.. class:: center large

   \XVI.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center medium

   *THE STORM STRIKING.*

.. vspace:: 2

After dinner Dave mounted the stairway leading
to the keeper's room.

"Still sleeping," thought Dave, lingering on the
threshold and hesitating to go forward.  He advanced,
though, in a moment, for he was startled at the keeper's
appearance.  It was like an intermittent stupor rather
than the continued unconsciousness of sleep.  Dave
touched the keeper, and he found the temperature to
be that of a high fever.  At times the old light-keeper
would start and open his eyes, and when Dave left the
room to search the pantry for some simple remedy on
the medicine-shelf, he found on his return that his
patient had left his bed and was standing by the
narrow window in the thick stone walls.  He murmured
something about "storm," about the "light," and
suffered Dave to lead him back to bed.

"I must look out how I leave him again," thought
Dave; and yet how could he manage the case alone?

"I must have help," he said, "and soon as I have
a chance I must hang a signal out at the door.
Perhaps some one will call, and I'll wait before showing
the signal."

Nobody came.  Why should they come because
suspecting any trouble?  The afternoon was pleasant.
The sea broke gently upon the stone walls of the
lighthouse, and the sun shed its quiet glow like some
benediction of peace upon the sea.  It was the very
afternoon when a spectator would be likely to
conclude that the lighthouse was in no need of help.

"I'll go now," at last concluded Dave.  "He is
asleep; his fever is running lower.  I will step to
the door of the signal-tower, and throw out a white
sheet there, and somebody may see it."

Nobody came, and yet here was a man who might
be dangerously sick.  At the hour of sunset he ran
up to the lantern and lighted the lamp.  He quickly
descended, saying to himself, "How glad I am that
it is not foggy!  So much to be thankful for!  How
could I start that signal!  But it won't do to try to
get through the night in this fashion.  What, what
can I do?"

The twilight thickened; the shadows trailed longer,
broader, and darker folds across the sea.  Dave sat
alone with the sick man, who moaned as if in pain.

"I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed, recalling what
Thomas Trafton told him.  "I can do one thing more.
I'll hang the lantern out from the tower; maybe Bart
will possibly see it."

Watching his chance when the keeper was less
uneasy, he ran downstairs, lighted a lantern, and then
suspended it outside a window on the landward side
of the tower.  The cool air of the sea blew refreshingly
on his heated face as he leaned out.

"The air feels good; but I can't stop here," said
Dave, hurrying away and returning to the keeper's
room.  "There!  I have done all I could, and now--"

There came to him again the words of the psalmist,
"Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall
strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."

He could rest on that promise.  He was beginning
to find out what God could be in the time of trouble.
Friends might fail him; on every side there might
be an emptiness, a loneliness.  All about him settled
the presence of God, filling up this solitude, this
waste, this night.  He could lean on God and--wait.
Others might suspect his integrity.  He knew he was
not guilty, and he welcomed the thought of God's
knowledge--that God saw to the bottom of his heart,
and into the depths of his life, and God knew he was
innocent.  Yes, he could wait.

That evening Thomas Trafton, his old mother, and
Bart sat around the little table of pine on which the
kitchen lamp had been placed.  The father was telling
where he had been that day and whom he had seen.

"Dave Fletcher was down at the fish-house to-day.
He spoke, Bart, of your looking through the spy-glass,
but he did not think it necessary."

"Did he speak of it?" said Bart eagerly.  "I have
a great mind to--"

"To go out?" asked his father--"to go out and
see?  Oh, nonsense!  No more need of it than my
going to Australia."

"Oh, let him go if he wants to," pleaded the
grandmother; and the father assented.

Bart reached up to the spy-glass resting on a shelf,
took it down, and seizing his hat also, hurried
outdoors.  He was going through the yard, when he saw
somebody stealing away from a shed in the rear of
the house.

"Why, if that don't look like Dave Fletcher
himself!" thought Bart.  "Dave Fletcher!" he
shouted.

Whoever it was--and the form certainly did resemble
Dave's--he made no reply, but hurried through
the yard down into the street.

"Somebody else, I suppose!" murmured Bart.
"Wonder what he wanted!  Perhaps it was one of
the fishermen who wanted to leave something for
father.  Can't stop to see now."

He hurried to the top of the hill, raised his glass,
and pointed it toward the lighthouse.

"Father!" he said, appearing the next minute in
the kitchen, and speaking hurriedly, "oh--oh--come
here! and you--granny--and see if--"

He said no more, for this was sufficient to startle
his auditors, and all three hastened up the hill.

"You didn't see a second light at the lighthouse?"
asked the father.

"Yes, I did," replied Bart; "I know I did."

"Guess you were mistaken," suggested granny.

"No, I wasn't; you just look and see your--yourself."

Granny could not see anything except a hazy
glow where the lighthouse might be supposed to
stand.

"Can't say I saw even that as well as I wanted
to," she confessed to herself.

Thomas Trafton's keen eyes, though, detected a
bright little star under the light in the lantern of
the sea-tower, and exclaimed, "No doubt about it!
Afraid there's trouble there, and--"

"Could take our boat, father," said Bart eagerly,
who had been already planning for this emergency,
"and pick up a doctor; for that is what the signal
must mean after what Dave told me, you know,
and--and--"

"We will go right off," said Thomas Trafton, in
his quick, decided way.

As they were rowing across the river to obtain the
services of Dr. Peters, Bart thought of the time,
half-a-dozen years ago, when his quest for the physician
ended in a river-bath.

"Dave Fletcher did a good thing for me then,"
thought Bart, "and I will stand by him now."

How he bent to his oars and made them bend in
their turn!  It was a pleasure to be of some use in
the world.

It was that evening that the light-keeper came
back for a moment to consciousness, and looking
steadily at Dave, said in a very serious tone of voice,
"How long have I been lying here?"

"Oh, only since morning," replied his nurse, delighted
to hear his voice.  "Now, you be quiet and tell me
if you want anything--any medicine you take when
you are sick this way."

Here the keeper's thoughts wandered again.  He
talked about the fog that was coming, and a craft
that was caught on the bar, and then, looking at Dave
steadily, said in a hesitating way, "Hadn't you
better--put it--back--Dave?"

"Put back what, sir?"

"What you--took?  Let me--as a--friend--advise you."

"Took?"

The keeper lifted himself on his elbow and looked
all around, as if trying to find something.

"David, don't hide it!"

Then the keeper fell back upon his bed, and
murmuring a few words indistinctly, he was lost again
in a stupor.  He was no sooner quiet than his
assistant's quick ear caught the sound of steps and voices
down in the signal-tower; for all the doors this
summer evening were open between the keeper's room
and the platform at the entrance of the lighthouse.
It was the arrival of Thomas Trafton's party, and
Dr. Peters was a member of it.  If Dave felt that its
coming was like the reaching out of a hand that lifted
him up and strengthened him, the words of the keeper
were like a hand smiting him down.

What did Toby Tolman mean?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THOMAS TRAFTON, DETECTIVE`:

.. class:: center large

   \XVII.

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.. class:: center medium

   *THOMAS TRAFTON, DETECTIVE.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Well!" said Dr. Peters, after a night of
careful watching of the light-keeper's symptoms.
He was a tall, elderly gentleman, with a very smooth,
melodious voice, its tones seeming to have been dipped
in syrup.

He began again,--

"Well, Mr. Fletcher, I think Mr. Tolman will
recover from this.  We shall get him through."  And
when he spoke, Dr. Peters waved his hands as if he
had already disposed of this case and now passed it
out of sight.

"However, Mr. Fletcher, the case will need careful
watching, and you had better take charge of it, unless
his daughter might come down to relieve you."

"Possibly his granddaughter," thought Dave.

"I don't think we can ever rely on Toby Tolman's
resuming his old duties here--might do a little
something, you know--and you had better get Thomas
Trafton or some trusty man to help you.  When will
the inspector be here?"

"Our lighthouse inspector, Captain Sinclair, doctor?"

"Yes."

"In about a fortnight, perhaps sooner.  The steamer
that brings supplies for the lighthouse will soon be
here, and Captain Sinclair will come in her, I think."

"The inspector, to look after matters?"

"Yes, sir.  Of course I shall report what you say
about the keeper to headquarters at once."

"I would.  It is very important.  And when
Captain Sinclair comes, let me know, please."

"I will, sir."

"Of course it is necessary that things should be
inspected.  I am glad he is coming.  Well to be
careful."

"What does he mean?" wondered Dave.  "Has
he got hold of those stories about misappropriation?
Well, when Captain Sinclair comes I hope he will
sift things to the bottom.  I am not afraid of an
investigation."

Dave took satisfaction in the consciousness of his
integrity; still it was not pleasant to be suspected.
It was Toby Tolman's mysterious language, indicating
that he too held Dave in some kind of suspicion,
which troubled Dave painfully.  The day after
Dr. Peters's visit the light-keeper again referred to this
mystery.  He roused himself into a state of seeming
consciousness, and then relapsed.  Again he awoke.
He looked around him and fastened his eyes on the
top of a clothes-press in the room.

"What do you want, sir?  Anything there that
you want to put on?" asked Dave.

The keeper shook his head.  Pointing at the top
of the press, he said, "Dave, I would put it back."

"What do you mean?  I don't understand you."

The keeper, though, was gone again, murmuring
about the tide, which he said was very late, and when
would it come in?  He had been awake long enough
to cruelly wound Dave once more.

Bart Trafton had gone home with Dr. Peters,
rowing him to town in the same dory that brought
him to the light the night before.  In two days Bart
was down again.  As he sat in the kitchen eating
some apple-pie offered him by his father, he said,
"Father, I found something in our shed."

"What was it, Bart?"

Laying down his lunch, Bart drew out of a package
a chronometer.

"Found that in the shed?" asked the surprised
father.

"Yes, on a shelf."

"Why, Bart, this has got the letters of our
lighthouse on it.  Must have come from here.  And in our
shed!  How did it get there?  I must show this to
Dave," said Thomas Trafton.

"Hush-sh!" exclaimed Dave, when his assistant
entered the room; "Toby is trying to get some sleep."

"See here!" said Thomas, in low tones.  "Must
show you something."

"I never saw it before," replied Dave, handling the
chronometer.  "It belongs here, though.  There are
the initials.  Where did you get it?"

A stir among the bedclothes arrested the attention
of the two men.  Toby Tolman had opened his eyes,
and was looking at them.  Something he saw must
have pleased him, for he smiled.

"That is right, Dave.  I am glad you brought it
back.  I would put it up."

"Where?" asked the astonished Dave, anxious to
lay hold of any clue to a serious mystery.

"Up there."

He pointed at the top of the clothes-press.  The
press was not a tall one.  Dave standing on tiptoe
could reach to its top, and he now laid the watch
there.

"Is that right?" asked Dave.

The keeper nodded his head, and then closed his
eyes, his face wearing a satisfied expression foreign to
it all through his sickness.

"Is not that queer?" whispered Dave.  "Some
mystery that is too deep for me."

He beckoned Thomas and Bart out of the room,
and then followed them downstairs.

"Now, how do you explain that?" asked Dave, as
the three clustered about the stove, whose heat that
day was acceptable, for the air was chilly and the
wind was a prophet of storm.

"Don't know," said Thomas.

"I'd give this old pocket-book full of silver,"
declared Dave, "to have that thing cleared up.  It takes
a load off my mind, I tell you.  The old man has been
harping on the fact that I took something, and he has
been looking toward that old clothes-press in such a
strange way.  I didn't know anything was up there.
Did you see how he acted, smiled about it?"

"Where did you get this pocket-book?" asked Thomas.

"The day that Toby was taken sick I picked it up
among the rocks here.  I had been over at your
fish-house, and found it when I was coming back.  Been
in the water, you see."

"Here are some letters on it--T.W."

"That means Tobias Winkley or--"

"Thomas Winkley.  Can't prove it to be Thomas
Trafton; and if you could no money is in it.  'T.W.,'
that is Timothy Watson."

"Or Timothy Waters."

"Yes; Timothy Waters, or anything that would
go with those initials.  Toby Tolman wouldn't go."

"Now I must go upstairs again to be with my
patient."

Dave Fletcher's heart was lighter as he went
upstairs again, but the burden now lightening on his
shoulders seemed to be transferred to those of Thomas
Trafton.

"Don't understand this!" he exclaimed.  "Where
is Bart?  Bart!"

There was no response to this call, and the father
went downstairs into the storeroom to hunt up Bart.

"Nobody here.  I'll go into the signal-tower," said
Thomas; and up in the engine-room, looking soberly
out of a window fronting the breakers on the bar,
stood Bart.

"You here, Bart?  What are you doing here?"

"Thinking," said the boy gloomily.

"What makes you so sober, Bart?"

"Don't like to have folks suspected."

"Neither do I.  That old thing was found in our
shed, but I don't know anything about it."

It relieved Bart to hear his father's stout assertion
of innocence, but his burdens had not all dropped.

"You know they talk about Dave, father."

"Well, you don't believe it?"

How could Bart consent to take Dave Fletcher
down from that high pedestal to which he had elevated
him?  How could he believe that his marble statue
was after all only common clay, and even of an inferior
earth?

"I won't believe it till it is proved," said Bart
stoutly, "nor of you either, father."

This relieved Thomas Trafton.

"Bart, you see if I don't turn this rascally thing
over and get at the truth!  I'll find the
mischief-maker; yes, I will."

Thomas Trafton was by nature a detective.  He
put himself on the trail of this mystery, and if a
trained hound he could not have followed the track
more keenly and resolutely.  He announced his
purpose to Dave, and the latter would ask him
occasionally if he had any clue.

"I am at work on it, still running.  The scent is
good, and I have something of a trail.  I'll tell you
when I get through," was one reply he made.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`INTO A TRAP`:

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   \XVIII.

.. vspace:: 1

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   *INTO A TRAP.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Cap'n Sinclair!" called out a voice.  The
man projecting the voice stood up in a boat
rocking gently in the harbour.  The man addressed
stood in a small black steamer, the *Spitfire*, employed
in conveying supplies to the lighthouses.  He leaned
over the steamer's rail and asked, "What is it?"

"I suppose you remember me, Timothy Waters?"

"Oh, that you, Waters?"

"Yes.  Could I see you?"

"Here I am."

Captain Sinclair was a middle-aged man, rather
stout, wearing a moustache, and flashing a friendly
look out of his brown eyes.

"I don't think I was fairly treated," said Timothy,
"when I lost my place in the lighthouse, and I wanted
to make some explanations.  Besides me, you may
have heard the stories all round about the goods
they are wasting at the light?"

"Well, I have heard something," said the captain
impatiently.  "Somebody wrote to me about it, but
he wasn't man enough to sign his name.  May have
been a woman, for all I know."

"If you'd let me come aboard--"

"Oh, you can come aboard; but I won't be here
long.  I must go into the light, and the steamer is
going off--at once.  Just row over to the lighthouse,
and I'll talk with you there."

Timothy turned away and shrugged his shoulders.
He said to himself, "I don't want to go in there.
However, I think I saw Trafton and that Fletcher
rowin' off.  I can stand the old man."  He turned to
the captain and said in a fawning tone, "All right,
cap'n.  I want you to have your say about it."

When Captain Sinclair and Timothy entered the
kitchen of the lighthouse, to the surprise of Timothy
he saw Trafton and Dave Fletcher.  They had "rowed
off," and had also rowed back.  Timothy was so
unprepared for their appearance that he would have
allowed the opportunity for presenting his cause to
slip by unimproved.  Dave Fletcher, though, was
ready to begin at once, and did so.

"Captain Sinclair, be seated, please, and the rest of
you.  When you were here yesterday I called your
attention to certain charges made against Mr. Tolman
and myself that--"

"Oh yes, I remember; and here is a letter full of
them somebody sent to me, but they were too cowardly
to add any name.  Let me have the light-book.  That
will give me some of last year's records."

Timothy was looking on in apparent unconcern,
but really in bewilderment, and wondering when his
turn would come.  He began to address the inspector.

"Cap'n--"

Thomas was ahead of him, and by this time had
said three words to Timothy's one,--

"Cap'n Sinclair, I--Cap'n Sinclair, I have something
to say.  I think the author of all this trouble
is here.  He"--pointing a finger at Timothy--"came
to this lighthouse, took a chronometer, carried it to
Shipton, left it in my shed--"

.. figure:: images/img-194.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Cap'n Sinclair, the author of all this trouble sits there.'"

   "'Cap'n Sinclair, the author of all this trouble sits there.'"  *Page 195*]

This torrent of charges, so unexpected, swept away
the statements Timothy had prepared for Captain
Sinclair.  He attempted to stem the torrent, and cried,
"It is easy to say you know, cap'n"--Timothy tried
to be very bland, restraining his temper--"easy to
say you know--"

"I can say that he came to this lighthouse," Thomas
broke out again, "and when the keeper was lyin' sick
on his bed--asleep, as he thought, is my guess--he
took a chronometer--"

Timothy, who had been curbing his temper, now
threw away all reins.

"Where is the keeper?" he asked stormily.  "I
don't believe he can say that."

"Oh, he is upstairs, and well enough to see us.
The doctor says he is doing well.  And walk up,
gentlemen," said Dave, "walk up!"

Bart was reading to the old man, who was seated
in a rocking-chair near his bed.  The company almost
filled the little room, but the light-keeper bade them
welcome.

"Mr. Tolman," said Thomas, "won't you tell Cap'n
Sinclair what you told me about the taking of the
chronometer?"

"Oh yes," said the old light-keeper slowly.  "I
was feeling very sick, so much so that I concluded to
lie down.  I s'pose I was lying with my eyes 'most
shut, when I heard a step and saw a man come in,
and he looked at me, and then he stood on a chair,
examined the top of that clothes-press, and took down
a chronometer--an old thing, but it might be fixed
up.  The man thought I was asleep, and I didn't see
his face, only it seemed to me as if he had whiskers,
and when he stood on a chair to reach the chronometer
he looked--standing with his back to me---as if it
was Dave Fletcher.  Well, I was that weak I couldn't
speak, and my visitor went off, supposing, I daresay,
that I was asleep.  Well, I kept it on my mind,
forgetting the whiskers, that it was Dave, and I charged
him with it.  Sorry I did--"

"Well," said Timothy fiercely, "why wasn't it
Fletcher?  It is about time that innocent chap should
do something."

"He says--Mr. Tolman says," observed Captain
Sinclair, "that you and Fletcher look alike."

"Wall," bawled Timothy, "why couldn't it have
been Fletcher much as me, don't you see?  Come
you--you feller--you stand by this clothes-press and
reach up, and let's see how you look."

"This 'feller' is ready," said Dave, going to the
clothes-press and reaching to its top.

"And here I am.  Why ain't it him?" asked Timothy,
also standing by the press and reaching up.

"They do look alike when their backs are turned
toward us," observed Captain Sinclair.

"Only the keeper said the one he saw had whiskers,
and there are Timothy's," remarked Thomas.

Dave wore only a moustache.  Thomas's remark
called the attention of everybody to Timothy's
whiskers, projecting like wings from his cheeks.  These
wings were red, but their colour was not as vivid as
that of Timothy's face.

"Besides," continued Thomas, "Dave wasn't here.
He can prove an alibi.  He was over at Pudding P'int;
came to get a fish from me."

"Why," said Timothy indignantly, "I was--two
miles away."

"I saw you round the shore myself; and here is
your pocket-book that Dave found at the foot of the
light-tower that very morning."

Timothy opened his eyes, swelled up his cheeks,
puffed, declared he didn't see how that was,
"and--and--"

Here Bart interrupted his stammering, and said,--

"And I saw you up at our shed that evening.  I
thought it was Dave Fletcher, taking a back view; but
when I called 'Dave!' there was no answer to it;--and,
Dave, you'd speak if I called, wouldn't you?"

"I think I would."

"This other person that looked like you didn't say
a word."

Timothy puffed and protested and denied, growing
redder and redder.

"See here, Waters," said Captain Sinclair: "I have
been looking at the lighthouse records last year, and
I have hunted up places where you have written, and
the style is like this in the letter I received--that
anonymous one--about the charges against the keepers
in the lighthouse.  You come up into the room above
with me."

Stuttering in his confusion, still asserting his
innocence, blushing, he stumbled up the stairway, and then
alone with Captain Sinclair he was urged to make a
clean breast of it.

"Yes," said the captain, "tell the whole story; for
there is enough against you to shut you up in quarters
of stone, and it won't be a lighthouse."

Timothy was startled by this.  He broke down, and
made a full confession to the inspector.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A PLACE TO STOP`:

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   \XIX.

.. vspace:: 1

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   *A PLACE TO STOP.*

.. vspace:: 2

Here is a place to bring into a harbour our story
drifting on like a boat.  Dave Fletcher was
appointed keeper of the light at Black Rocks, and
Thomas Trafton became his assistant.  Bart, though,
said he considered himself to be second assistant, and
should fit himself as rapidly as possible for a keeper.
He wanted, he added, to be as useful as he could
be--an idea that never forsook him since the old days
of his career as Little Mew.  Dick Pray went on in
the old style, full of plans and projects, stirred by an
intense ambition to do some big thing, but impatient
of the little things necessary to the execution of the
whole.  Always ready to dare, he was as uniformly
averse to the doing of the hard work that might be
demanded.

Toby Tolman took up his quarters in his old home
ashore.  As he could not go where Dave was, he said
he thought Dave ought to come to him as often as
possible.  Dave promised to do all in his power, and
as a pledge of his sincerity he married the
light-keeper's granddaughter, black-eyed, bright-eyed May
Tolman.  She lived under Toby Tolman's roof; and as
Dave improved every opportunity to visit the grand-daughter,
he was able to fulfil his promise made to the
grandfather.

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   THE END.

.. vspace:: 4

----

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   THE "GREY FOX."  Tom Sevan.
   THE JEWELLED LIZARD.  W. D. Fordyce.
   THE CHANCELLOR'S SPY.  Tom Sevan.
   HIS MAJESTY'S GLOVE.  Miss Whitham.
   A FORTUNE FROM THE SKY.  S. Kuppord.
   FRANK'S FIRST TERM.  Harold Avery.
   THREE SAILOR BOYS; or, Adrift in the Pacific.  Commander Cameron.
   RIVERTON BOYS.  K. M. Eady.

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   *TRAVEL SERIES.*

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   ADVENTURERS ALL.  K. M. Eady,
   ALIVE IN THE JUNGLE.  Eleanor Stredder.
   CABIN IN THE CLEARING.  Edward S. Ellis.
   THE CASTAWAYS.  Captain Mayne Reid.
   LOST IN THE BACKWOODS.  Mrs. Traitt.
   LOST IN THE WILDS OF CANADA.  Eleanor Stredder.
   THE THREE TRAPPERS.  Achilles Daunt.
   THROUGH FOREST AND FIRE.  E. S. Ellis.
   WITH STANLEY ON THE CONGO.  Miss Douglas.

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Books for the Young.

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   NELSON'S
   "ROYAL"
   LIBRARIES

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The finest and most attractive series
of Gift and Reward Books in the
market at so moderate a price.  They
are mainly COPYRIGHT works, carefully
selected from the most popular and
successful of the many books for the young
issued by Messrs. Nelson in recent years,
and are most attractively illustrated and
tastefully bound.  Each volume has eight
coloured plates, with the exception of a
few, which have eight monochrome
illustrations.  The books are issued in three
series at 2/-, 1/6, and 1/.  For lists see
following pages.

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   THOMAS NELSON AND SONS,

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   *London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York*

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   NELSON'S "ROYAL" LIBRARIES.

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   THE TWO SHILLING SERIES.

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   IN TAUNTON TOWN.  E. Everett-Green.
   IN THE LAND OF THE MOOSE.  Achilles Daunt.
   TREFOIL.  Margaret P. Macdonald.
   WENZEL'S INHERITANCE.  Annie Lucas.
   VERA'S TRUST.  Evelyn Everett-Green.
   FOR THE FAITH.  Evelyn Everett-Green.
   ALISON WALSH.  Constance Evelyn.
   BLIND LOYALTY.  E. L. Haverfield.
   DOROTHY ARDEN.  J. M. Callwell.
   FALLEN FORTUNES.  Evelyn Everett-Green.
   FOR HER SAKE.  Gordon Roy.
   JACK MACKENZIE.  Gordon Stables, M.D.
   IN PALACE AND FAUBOURG.  C. J. G.
   ISABEL'S SECRET; or, A Sister's Love.
   IVANHOE.  Sir Walter Scott.
   KENILWORTH.  Sir Walter Scott.
   LÉONIE.  Annie Lucas.
   MAUD MELVILLE'S MARRIAGE.  E. Everett-Green.
   OLIVE ROSCOE.  Evelyn Everett-Green.
   QUEECHY.  Miss Wetherell.
   SCHÖNBERG-COTTA FAMILY.  Mrs. Charles.
   "SISTER."  Evelyn Everett-Green.
   THE CITY AND THE CASTLE.  Annie Lucas.
   THE CZAR.  Deborah Alcock.
   THE HEIRESS OF WYLMINGTON.  Everett-Green.
   THE SIGN OF THE RED CROSS.  Everett-Green.
   THE SPANISH BROTHERS.  Deborah Alcock.
   THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE.  Harold Avery.
   THE UNCHARTED ISLAND.  Skelton Kuppord.
   THE WIDE WIDE WORLD.  Miss Wetherell.

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   NELSON'S "ROYAL" LIBRARIES.

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   THE EIGHTEENPENCE SERIES.

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   SECRET CHAMBER AT CHAD.  E. Everett-Green.
   SONS OF FREEDOM.  Fred Whishaw.
   SONS OF THE VIKINGS.  John Gunn.
   STORY OF MADGE HILTON.  Agnes C. Maitland.
   IN LIONLAND.  M. Douglas.
   MARGIE AT THE HARBOUR LIGHT.  E. A. Rand.
   ADA AND GERTY.  Louisa M. Gray.
   AFAR IN THE FOREST.  W. H. G. Kingston.
   A GOODLY HERITAGE.  K. M. Eady.
   BORIS THE BEAR HUNTER.  Fred Whishaw.
   "DARLING."  M. H. Cornwall Legh.
   DULCIE'S LITTLE BROTHER.  E. Everett-Green.
   ESTHER'S CHARGE.  E. Everett-Green.
   EVER HEAVENWARD.  Mrs. Prentiss.
   FOR THE QUEEN'S SAKE.  E. Everett-Green.
   GUY POWERS' WATCHWORD.  J. T. Hopkins.
   IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.  W. H. G. Kingston.
   IN THE WARS OF THE ROSES.  E. Everett-Green.
   LIONEL HARCOURT, THE ETONIAN.  G. E. Wyatt.
   MOLLY'S HEROINE.  "Fleur de Lys."
   NORSELAND TALES.  H. H. Boyesen.
   ON ANGELS' WINGS.  Hon. Mrs. Greene.
   ONE SUMMER BY THE SEA.  J. M. Callwell.
   PARTNERS.  H. F. Gethen.
   ROBINETTA.  L. E. Tiddeman.
   SALOME.  Mrs. Marshall.
   THE LORD OF DYNEVOR.  E. Everett-Green.
   THE YOUNG HUGUENOTS.  "Fleur de Lys."
   THE YOUNG RAJAH.  W. H. G. Kingston.
   WINNING THE VICTORY.  E. Everett-Green.

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   NELSON'S "ROYAL" LIBRARIES.

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   THE SHILLING SERIES.

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   ACADEMY BOYS IN CAMP.  S. F. Spear.
   ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.  Miss Gaye.
   ESTHER REID.  Pansy.
   TIMOTHY TATTERS.  J. M. Callwell.
   AMPTHILL TOWERS.  A. J. Foster.
   IVY AND OAK.
   ARCHIE DIGBY.  G. E. Wyatt.
   AS WE SWEEP THROUGH THE DEEP.  Gordon Stables, M.D.
   AT THE BLACK ROCKS.  Edward Rand.
   AUNT SALLY.  Constance Milman.
   CYRIL'S PROMISE.  A Temperance Tale.  W. J. Lacey.
   GEORGIE MERTON.  Florence Harrington.
   GREY HOUSE ON THE HILL.  Hon. Mrs. Greene.
   HUDSON BAY.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   JUBILEE HALL.  Hon. Mrs. Greene.
   LOST SQUIRE OF INGLEWOOD.  Dr. Jackson.
   MARK MARKSEN'S SECRET.  Jessie Armstrong.
   MARTIN RATTLER.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   RHODA'S REFORM.  M. A. Paull.
   SHENAC.  The Story of a Highland Family in Canada.
   SIR AYLMER'S HEIR.  E. Everett-Green.
   SOLDIERS OF THE QUEEN.  Harold Avery.
   THE CORAL ISLAND.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   THE DOG CRUSOE.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   THE GOLDEN HOUSE.  Mrs. Woods Baker.
   THE GORILLA HUNTERS.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   THE ROBBER BARON.  A. J. Foster.
   THE WILLOUGHBY BOYS.  Emily C. Hartley.
   UNGAVA.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   WORLD OF ICE.  R. M. Ballantyne.
   YOUNG FUR TRADERS.  R. M. Ballantyne.

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   \T. NELSON AND SONS, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York.

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