“Want to know!”

“You’re up early, aren’t you?”

“Hey?  Yes, I guess likely I be.”

“What’s wrong?  Not sick, are you?”

“No.  Course I ain’t sick.  Say!” Seth seemed to take a sudden interest in the conversation, “you come straight up from the cove, have you?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“You ain’t been hangin’ around outside here, have you?”

“Hanging around outside?  What do you mean?”

“Nothin’.  Why do you stand there starin’ at me as if I was some sort of dime show curiosity?  Anything queer about me?”

“No.  I didn’t know I was staring.”  The young man was bewildered by this strange behavior.  He was prepared for suspicion concerning his own actions; but Seth seemed rather to be defending himself from suspicion on the part of his helper.

“Humph!” The lightkeeper looked keenly at him for a moment.  Then he said: 

“Well, ain’t there nothin’ to do but stand around?  Gettin’ pretty nigh to supper time, ain’t it?  Put the kettle on and set the table.”

It was not supper time, but Brown obeyed orders.  Seth went to cooking.  He spoke perhaps three words during the culinary operations, and a half dozen more during the meal, of which he ate scarcely a mouthful.  After it was over, he put on his cap and went out, not to his usual lounging spot, the bench, but to walk a full half mile along the edge of the bluff and there sit in the seclusion of a clump of bayberry bushes and gaze stonily at nothing in particular.  Here he remained until the deepening dusk reminded him that it was time the lights were burning.  Returning, he lit the lanterns and sat down in the room at the top of the left-hand tower to think, and think, and think.

The shadows deepened; the last flush of twilight faded from the western sky; the stars came out; night and the black silence of night shrouded Eastboro Twin-Lights.  The clock in the tower room ticked on to nine and then to ten.  Still Seth sat, a huddled, dazed figure in the camp chair, by the great lantern.  At last he rose and went out on the iron balcony.  He looked down at the buildings below him; they were black shapes without a glimmer.  Brown had evidently gone to bed.  In the little stable Joshua thumped the side of his stall once or twice—­dreaming, perhaps, that he was again pursued by the fly-papered Job—­and subsided.  Atkins turned his gaze across the inlet.  In the rear window of the bungalow a dim light still burned.  As he watched, it was extinguished.  He groaned aloud, and, with his arms on the railing, thought and thought.

Suddenly he heard sounds, faint, but perceptible, above the low grumble of the surf.  They were repeated, the sounds of breaking sticks, as if some one was moving through the briers and bushes beyond the stable.  Some one was moving there, coming along the path from the upper end of the cove.  Around the corner of the stable a bulky figure appeared.  It came on until it stood beneath the balcony.