man came some great sigh, then a kind of sobbing, and again threatening outbursts.  At last the wind bore away the haze, but brought black, broken clouds, which hid the moon.  From the west it began to blow more and more; the waves sprang with rage against the rock of the light-house, licking with foam the foundation walls.  In the distance a storm was beginning to bellow.  On the dark, disturbed expanse certain green lanterns gleamed from the masts of ships.  These green points rose high and then sank; now they swayed to the right, and now to the left.  Skavinski descended to his room.  The storm began to howl.  Outside, people on those ships were struggling with night, with darkness, with waves; but inside the tower it was calm and still.  Even the sounds of the storm hardly came through the thick walls, and only the measured tick-tack of the clock lulled the wearied old man to his slumber.

CHAPTER II.

Hours, days, and weeks began to pass.  Sailors assert that sometimes when the sea is greatly roused, something from out the midst of night and darkness calls them by name.  If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him.  But to hear them quiet is needed.  Besides old age loves to put itself aside as if with a foreboding of the grave.  The light-house had become for Skavinski such a half grave.  Nothing is more monotonous than life on a beacon-tower.  If young people consent to take up this service they leave it after a time.  Light-house keepers are generally men not young, gloomy, and confined to themselves.  If by chance one of them leaves his light-house and goes among men, he walks in the midst of them like a person roused from deep slumber.  On the tower there is a lack of minute impressions which in ordinary life teach men to adapt themselves to everything.  All that a light-house keeper comes in contact with is gigantic, and devoid of definitely outlined forms.  The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness.  That is a life in which thought is continual meditation, and out of that meditation nothing rouses the keeper, not even his work.  Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form the only variety.  But Skavinski felt more happiness than ever in life before.  He rose with the dawn, took his breakfast, polished the lens, and then sitting on the balcony gazed into the distance of the water; and his eyes were never sated with the pictures which he saw before him.  On the enormous turquoise ground of the ocean were to be seen generally flocks of swollen sails gleaming in the rays of the sun so brightly that the eyes were blinking before the excess of light.  Sometimes the ships, favored by the so-called trade winds, went in an extended line one