“I sha’n’t, neither.  Let go of my arm.  It’s blame foolishness, I tell you.  Why,” impatiently, “course it’s foolishness!  I don’t know the first thing about you.”

“What of it?  I don’t know anything about you, either.”

Again the lightkeeper seemed unaccountably agitated.  He stopped in his stride and whirled to face his companion.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded fiercely.  Before the young man could reply, he turned again, strode to the door of the light, flung it open, and disappeared within.  The door closed behind him with a thunderous bang.

John Brown gazed after him in bewilderment.  Then he shrugged his shoulders and returned to the bench.

The surf at the foot of the bluff grumbled and chuckled wickedly, as if it knew all of poor humanity’s secrets and found a cynic’s enjoyment in the knowledge.

CHAPTER IV

THE COMING OF JOB

The next morning Seth was gloomy and uncommunicative.  At the breakfast table, when Brown glanced up from his plate, he several times caught the lightkeeper looking intently at him with the distrustful, half-suspicious gaze of the night before.  Though quite aware of this scrutiny, he made no comment upon it until the meal was nearly over; then he observed suddenly: 

“It’s all right; you needn’t.”

“Needn’t what?” demanded Atkins, in astonishment.

“Look at me as if you expected me to explode at any minute.  I sha’n’t.  I’m not loaded.”

Seth colored, under his coat of sunburn, and seemed embarrassed.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he stammered.  “Have the moskeeters affected your brains?”

“No.  My brains, such as they are, are all right, and I want to keep them so.  That’s why I request you not to look at me in that way.”

“How was I lookin’ at you?  I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.  You are wondering how much I know.  I don’t know anything and I’m not curious.  That’s the truth.  Now why not let it go at that?”

“See here, young feller, I—­”

“No; you see here.  I’m not an Old Sleuth; I haven’t any ambitions that way.  I don’t know anything about you—­what you’ve been, what you’ve done—­”

“Done!” Seth leaned across the table so suddenly that he upset his chair.  “Done?” he cried; “what do you mean by that?  Who said I’d done anything?  It’s a lie.”

“What is a lie?”

“Why—­why—­er—­whatever they said!”

“Who said?”

“Why, the ones that—­that said what you said they said.”

“I didn’t say anyone had said anything.”

“Then what do you mean by—­by hintin’?  Hey?  What do you mean by it?”

He brandished a clenched fist over the breakfast dishes.  Brown leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Call me when the patient recovers his senses,” he drawled wearily.  “This delirium is painful to a sensitive nature.”