“Everything.  The whole situation.  Atkins,” Brown leaned forward now and spoke with earnestness, “I like your motto.  It suits me.  ’Mind your own business’ suits me down to the ground.  It proves that you and I were made to work together in a place just like this.”

“Does, hey?  I want to know!”

“You do know.  Why, just think:  each of us has pleaded ‘not guilty.’  We’ve done nothing—­we’re entirely innocent—­and we want to forget it.  I agree not to ask you how old you are, nor why you wear your brand of whiskers, nor how you like them, nor—­nor anything.  I agree not to ask questions at all.”

“Humph! but you asked some last night.”

“Purely by accident.  You didn’t answer them.  You asked me some, also, if you will remember, and I didn’t answer them, either.  Good!  We forget everything and agree not to do it again.”

“Ugh!  I tell you I ain’t done nothin’.”

“I know.  Neither have I. Let the dead past be its own undertaker, so far as we are concerned.  I’m honest, Atkins, and tolerably straight.  I believe you are; I really do.  But we don’t care to talk about ourselves, that’s all.  And, fortunately, kind Providence has brought us together in a place where there’s no one else to talk.  I like you, I credit you with good taste; therefore, you must like me.”

“Hey?  Ho, ho!” Seth laughed, in spite of himself.  “Young man,” he observed, “you ain’t cultivated your modesty under glass, have you?”

Brown smiled.  “Joking aside,” he said, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t, in time, make an ideal assistant lightkeeper.  Give me a trial, at any rate.  I need an employer; you need a helper.  Here we both are.  Come; it is a bargain, isn’t it?  Any brass to be scrubbed—­boss?”

Of course, had Eastboro Twin-Lights been an important station, the possibility of John Brown’s remaining there would have been nonexistent.  If it had been winter, or even early spring or fall, a regular assistant would have been appointed at once, and the castaway given his walking papers.  If Seth Atkins had not been Seth Atkins, particular friend of the district superintendent, matters might have been different.  But the Eastboro lights were unimportant, merely a half-way mark between Orham on the one hand and the powerful Seaboard Heights beacon on the other.  It was the beginning of summer, when wrecks almost never occurred.  And the superintendent liked Seth, and Seth liked him.  So, although Mr. Atkins still scoffed at his guest’s becoming a permanent fixture at the lights, and merely consented, after more parley, to see if he couldn’t arrange for him to “hang around and help a spell until somebody else was sent,” the conversation with the superintendent over the long distance ’phone resulted more favorably for Brown than that nonchalant young gentleman had a reasonable right to expect.

“The Lord knows who I can send you now, Atkins!” said the superintendent.  “I can’t think of a man anywhere that can be spared.  If you can get on for a day or two longer, I’ll try to get a helper down! but where he’s coming from I don’t see.”