_THE STORM STRIKING._

After dinner Dave mounted the stairway leading to the keeper's room.

"Still sleeping," thought Dave, lingering on the threshold and hesitating to go forward. He advanced, though, in a moment, for he was startled at the keeper's appearance. It was like an intermittent stupor rather than the continued unconsciousness of sleep. Dave touched the keeper, and he found the temperature to be that of a high fever. At times the old light-keeper would start and open his eyes, and when Dave left the room to search the pantry for some simple remedy on the medicine-shelf, he found on his return that his patient had left his bed and was standing by the narrow window in the thick stone walls. He murmured something about "storm," about the "light," and suffered Dave to lead him back to bed.

"I must look out how I leave him again," thought Dave; and yet how could he manage the case alone?

"I must have help," he said, "and soon as I have a chance I must hang a signal out at the door. Perhaps some one will call, and I'll wait before showing the signal."

n.o.body came. Why should they come because suspecting any trouble? The afternoon was pleasant. The sea broke gently upon the stone walls of the lighthouse, and the sun shed its quiet glow like some benediction of peace upon the sea. It was the very afternoon when a spectator would be likely to conclude that the lighthouse was in no need of help.

"I'll go now," at last concluded Dave. "He is asleep; his fever is running lower. I will step to the door of the signal-tower, and throw out a white sheet there, and somebody may see it."

n.o.body came, and yet here was a man who might be dangerously sick. At the hour of sunset he ran up to the lantern and lighted the lamp. He quickly descended, saying to himself, "How glad I am that it is not foggy! So much to be thankful for! How could I start that signal! But it won't do to try to get through the night in this fashion. What, what can I do?"

The twilight thickened; the shadows trailed longer, broader, and darker folds across the sea. Dave sat alone with the sick man, who moaned as if in pain.

"I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed, recalling what Thomas Trafton told him. "I can do one thing more. I'll hang the lantern out from the tower; maybe Bart will possibly see it."

Watching his chance when the keeper was less uneasy, he ran downstairs, lighted a lantern, and then suspended it outside a window on the landward side of the tower. The cool air of the sea blew refreshingly on his heated face as he leaned out.

"The air feels good; but I can't stop here," said Dave, hurrying away and returning to the keeper's room. "There! I have done all I could, and now--"

There came to him again the words of the psalmist, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."

He could rest on that promise. He was beginning to find out what G.o.d could be in the time of trouble. Friends might fail him; on every side there might be an emptiness, a loneliness. All about him settled the presence of G.o.d, filling up this solitude, this waste, this night. He could lean on G.o.d and--wait. Others might suspect his integrity. He knew he was not guilty, and he welcomed the thought of G.o.d's knowledge--that G.o.d saw to the bottom of his heart, and into the depths of his life, and G.o.d knew he was innocent. Yes, he could wait.

That evening Thomas Trafton, his old mother, and Bart sat around the little table of pine on which the kitchen lamp had been placed. The father was telling where he had been that day and whom he had seen.

"Dave Fletcher was down at the fish-house to-day. He spoke, Bart, of your looking through the spy-gla.s.s, but he did not think it necessary."

"Did he speak of it?" said Bart eagerly. "I have a great mind to--"

"To go out?" asked his father--"to go out and see? Oh, nonsense! No more need of it than my going to Australia."

"Oh, let him go if he wants to," pleaded the grandmother; and the father a.s.sented.

Bart reached up to the spy-gla.s.s resting on a shelf, took it down, and seizing his hat also, hurried outdoors. He was going through the yard, when he saw somebody stealing away from a shed in the rear of the house.

"Why, if that don't look like Dave Fletcher himself!" thought Bart.

"Dave Fletcher!" he shouted.

Whoever it was--and the form certainly did resemble Dave's--he made no reply, but hurried through the yard down into the street.

"Somebody else, I suppose!" murmured Bart. "Wonder what he wanted!

Perhaps it was one of the fishermen who wanted to leave something for father. Can't stop to see now."

He hurried to the top of the hill, raised his gla.s.s, and pointed it toward the lighthouse.

"Father!" he said, appearing the next minute in the kitchen, and speaking hurriedly, "oh--oh--come here! and you--granny--and see if--"

He said no more, for this was sufficient to startle his auditors, and all three hastened up the hill.

"You didn't see a second light at the lighthouse?" asked the father.

"Yes, I did," replied Bart; "I know I did."

"Guess you were mistaken," suggested granny.

"No, I wasn't; you just look and see your--yourself."

Granny could not see anything except a hazy glow where the lighthouse might be supposed to stand.

"Can't say I saw even that as well as I wanted to," she confessed to herself.

Thomas Trafton's keen eyes, though, detected a bright little star under the light in the lantern of the sea-tower, and exclaimed, "No doubt about it! Afraid there's trouble there, and--"

"Could take our boat, father," said Bart eagerly, who had been already planning for this emergency, "and pick up a doctor; for that is what the signal must mean after what Dave told me, you know, and--and--"

"We will go right off," said Thomas Trafton, in his quick, decided way.

As they were rowing across the river to obtain the services of Dr.

Peters, Bart thought of the time, half-a-dozen years ago, when his quest for the physician ended in a river-bath.

"Dave Fletcher did a good thing for me then," thought Bart, "and I will stand by him now."

How he bent to his oars and made them bend in their turn! It was a pleasure to be of some use in the world.

It was that evening that the light-keeper came back for a moment to consciousness, and looking steadily at Dave, said in a very serious tone of voice, "How long have I been lying here?"

"Oh, only since morning," replied his nurse, delighted to hear his voice. "Now, you be quiet and tell me if you want anything--any medicine you take when you are sick this way."

Here the keeper's thoughts wandered again. He talked about the fog that was coming, and a craft that was caught on the bar, and then, looking at Dave steadily, said in a hesitating way, "Hadn't you better--put it--back--Dave?"

"Put back what, sir?"

"What you--took? Let me--as a--friend--advise you."

"Took?"

The keeper lifted himself on his elbow and looked all around, as if trying to find something.

"David, don't hide it!"

Then the keeper fell back upon his bed, and murmuring a few words indistinctly, he was lost again in a stupor. He was no sooner quiet than his a.s.sistant's quick ear caught the sound of steps and voices down in the signal-tower; for all the doors this summer evening were open between the keeper's room and the platform at the entrance of the lighthouse. It was the arrival of Thomas Trafton's party, and Dr. Peters was a member of it. If Dave felt that its coming was like the reaching out of a hand that lifted him up and strengthened him, the words of the keeper were like a hand smiting him down.

What did Toby Tolman mean?