In an instant Caleb was beside her,—­his arm about her, holding her safely where she was; but to continue was impossible for either.

“Ho!  Mr. F.!” shouted Caleb; “come this way, will you, and give my wife your hand?  She is a little frightened, and can’t go on.”

Presently a stout arm and hand appeared from among that nodding, mocking grass, and a cheery voice exclaimed,—­

“Here, my dear lady, take right hold, strong;—­you can’t pull me over,—­not if you try to.”

Unclasping, with some difficulty, her fingers from the rock, into which they seemed to have grown, Mysie grasped the proffered hand, and the next moment was safe upon the turf.

“Oh, my good gracious!” muttered the kind old man; but whether the exclamation was caused by Mysie’s face, pale, no doubt, by the effort necessary to raise her half-fainting figure, or by the idea of the peril in which she had been, did not appear.

Clarissa, calm and equable, was next passed up by Caleb, who, declining the proffered hand, drew himself up, by a firm grasp upon the rocky scarp of the cliff.

“Guess you was scart some then, wa’n’t you?” inquired Clarissa, as the party walked homeward.

“Oh, no!” replied Mysie, quickly.  “But I could not get over the top of the cliff alone,—­it was so steep.”

“Oh, that was the matter?” drawled the child, with a sidelong glance of her sharp black eyes.

The northeast wind which went fossilizing with Mysie and Clara on their first excursion was the precursor of a furious storm of rain and wind, ranking, according to the dictum of experienced weatherseers, as little inferior to that famous one in which fell the Minot’s Ledge Light-house.

As the gale reached its height, it was a sight at once terrible and beautiful, to watch, standing in the lantern, the goaded sea, whose foam-capped waves could plainly be seen at the horizon line, breaking here and there upon sunken rocks, over which in their playful moods they scarcely rippled, but on which they now dashed with such white fury as to make them discernible, even through the darkness of night.  One long, low ridge of submarine rocks, around which seethed a perpetual caldron, was called the Devil’s Bridge; but when erected, or for what purpose, tradition failed to state.

Never, surely, did the wind rave about a peaceful inland dwelling as it did about that lonely light-house for two long nights.  It roared, it howled, it shrieked, it whistled; it drew back to gather strength, and then rushed to the attack with such mad fury, that the strong, young light-house, whose frame was all of iron and stone, shrunk trembling before it, and the children in their beds screamed aloud for fear.  But through all and beyond all, the calm, strong light sent out its piercing, warning rays into the black night; and who can tell what sinner it may that night have prevented from crossing the Devil’s Bridge to the world which lies beyond?