The lightkeeper stood watch in the tower at night.  During most of the day he slept; but, after the first week was over, and his trust in his helper became more firm, he developed the habit of rising at two in the afternoon, eating a breakfast—­or dinner, or whatever the meal might be called—­and wandering off along the crooked road leading south and in the direction of Pounddug Slough.  The road, little used and grass grown, twisted and turned amid the dunes until it disappeared in a distant grove of scrub oaks and pitch pines.  Each afternoon—­except on Sundays and on the occasions of his excursions to the village—­Atkins would rise from the table, saunter to the door to look at the weather, and then, without excuse or explanation, start slowly down the road.  For the first hundred yards he sauntered, then the saunter became a brisk walk, and when he reached the edge of the grove he was hurrying almost at a dog trot.  Sometimes he carried a burden with him, a brown paper parcel brought from Eastboro, a hammer, a saw, or a coil of rope.  Once he descended to the boathouse at the foot of the bluff by the inlet and emerged bearing a big bundle of canvas, apparently an old sail; this he arranged, with some difficulty, on his shoulder and stumbled up the slope, past the corner of the house and away toward the grove.  Brown watched him wonderingly.  Where was he going, and why?  What was the mysterious destination of all these tools and old junk?  Where did Seth spend his afternoons and why, when he returned, did his hands and clothes smell of tar?  The substitute assistant was puzzled, but he asked no questions.  And Seth volunteered no solution of the puzzle.

Yet the solution came, and in an unexpected way.  Seth drove to the village one afternoon and returned with literature, smoking materials and an announcement.  The latter he made during supper.

“I tried to buy that fly paper we wanted today,” he observed, as a preliminary.  “Couldn’t get none.  All out.”

“But will have some in very shortly, I presume,” suggested the assistant, who knew the idiosyncrasies of country stores.

“Oh, yes, sartin!  Expectin’ it every minute.  That store’s got a consider’ble sight more expectations in it than it has anything else.  They’re always six months ahead of the season or behind it in that store.  When it’s so cold that the snow birds get chilblains they’ll have the shelves chuck full of fly paper.  Now, when it’s hotter than a kittle of pepper tea, the bulk of their stock is ice picks and mittens.  Bah!  However, they’re goin’ to send the fly paper over when it comes, along with the dog.”

“The dog?” repeated Brown in amazement.

“Yup.  That’s what I was goin’ to tell you—­about the dog.  I ordered a dog today.  Didn’t pay nothin’ for him, you understand.  Henry G., the storekeeper, gave him to me.  The boy’ll fetch him down when he fetches the fly paper.”

“A dog?  We’re—­you’re going to keep a dog—­here?”