“Whoa!” he shouted.  “Whoa!”

But Joshua did not “whoa” at once.  He kept on along the edge of the high, sandy slope.  Brown, from the tail of his eye, caught a glimpse of the winding channel of the Slough beneath him, of a small schooner heeled over on the mud flat at its margin, and of the figure of a man at work beside it.

“Whoa!” he ordered once more.  “Whoa, Josh! stand still!”

Perhaps the horse would have stood still—­he seemed about to do so—­but from the distance, somewhere on the road he had just traversed, came a howl, long-drawn and terrifyingly familiar.  Joshua heard it, jumped sidewise, jerked at the halter and, as if playing “snap the whip,” sent his would-be captor heels over head over the edge of the bank and rolling down the sandy slope.  The halter flew from Brown’s hands, he rolled and bumped and clutched at clumps of grass and bushes.  Then he struck the beach and stopped, spread-eagled on the wet sand.

A voice said:  “Well—­by—­time!”

Brown looked up.  Seth Atkins, a paint pail in one hand and a dripping brush in the other, was standing beside him, blank astonishment written on his features.

“Well—­by time!” said Seth again, and with even stronger emphasis.

The substitute assistant raised himself to his knees, rubbed his back with one hand, and then, turning, sat in the sand and returned his superior’s astonished gaze with one of equal bewilderment.

“Hello!” he gasped.  “Well, by George! it’s you, isn’t it!  What are you doing here?”

The lightkeeper put down the pail of paint.

“What am I doin’?” he repeated.  “What am I doin’—?  Say!” His astonishment changed to suspicion and wrath.  “Never you mind what I’m doin’,” he went on.  “That’s my affairs.  What are you doin’ here?  That’s what I want to know.”

Brown rubbed the sand out of his hair.

“I don’t know exactly what I am doing—­yet,” he panted.

“You don’t, hey?  Well, you’d better find out.  Maybe I can help you to remember.  Sneakin’ after me, wa’n’t you?  Spyin’, to find out what I was up to, hey?”

He shook the wet paint brush angrily at his helper.  Brown looked at him for an instant; then he rose to his feet.

“Spyin’ on me, was you?” repeated Seth.

“Didn’t I tell you that mindin’ your own business was part of our dicker if you was goin’ to stay at Eastboro lighthouse?  Didn’t I tell you that?”

The young man answered with a contemptuous shrug.  Turning on his heel, he started to walk away.  Atkins sprang after him.

“Answer me,” he ordered.  “Didn’t I say you’d got to mind your own business?”

“You did,” coldly.

“You bet I did!  And was you mindin’ it?”

“No.  I was minding yours—­like a fool.  Now you may mind it yourself.”

“Hold on there!  Where you goin’?”

“Back to the lights.  And you may go to the devil, or anywhere else that suits your convenience, and take your confounded menagerie with you.”