"I cal'late this is some gale," he agreed. "And if the wind don't shift before the tide turns, the sea's going to roll in here clean across the flats. She'll pour over the reefs in a reg'lar flood."

"Oh, never, Tobias!"

"I believe 'twill," he repeated. "We're likely to have such another high tide as we had in ninety-eight. Our cellar was full then, and no mistake."

"Why, Tobias Ba.s.sett, there isn't any cellar to this lighthouse."

"Oh, sugar! So there ain't. Ne'r mind. It would have been full if we'd had a cellar," he chuckled. "And this comin' tide may be like it.

It'll maybe wash out the sh.e.l.l road. It did that time."

"Then I would better hurry home. I may be marooned here all night if I don't."

"Wal, maybe so. But you're welcome to stay, and I guess Miss Ida won't worry none about ye."

When Lorna ran downstairs she felt, after all, that she could not leave Tobias alone to fumble with the housekeeping. He had all he could do una.s.sisted to attend to the light.

"And poor Miss Heppy in bed," the girl murmured. "I'll get dinner for them anyway before I go. An invalid would fare poorly in this tower to-day with only Tobias about."

No staples were lacking in the lighthouse pantry, and Lorna was a capable housewife. Her culinary attempts might not match Miss Heppy's, but the latter praised her willing helper.

"I dunno what I should have done without ye, Lorna," she declared. "I just felt as though I was all in. I couldn't lift a finger to help myself, nor Tobias either."

"I am not sure that you shouldn't have a doctor, even now, Miss Heppy,"

the younger woman observed.

"For love's sake! What do I want a doctor messin' with me for? Doctors air for broken bones and young children. Common sense is the only doctor I've had for a good many years. And I know as well as you do, Lorna, that there ain't nothing re'lly the matter with me, only worriment. I'm an old fool, and that's all there is to it! But it does seem as though I couldn't begin all over again, saving the pennies and going without, and stinting ourselves. We'll end in the poorhouse, Tobias and me, like enough. Oh, dear, oh, dear!"

She concluded with a sob, and Lorna stole out of the room. There was nothing she could say that would really comfort Miss Heppy. She had, as Tobias said, "let go all holts." If the money was actually lost, the young woman pitied Tobias as much as she did Miss Heppy. The latter was going to be more lachrymose than ever.

"Perhaps Tobias is more than half right," Lorna thought, as she bustled about her work. "They never have had any good of the money they scrimped so hard to save; or of Captain Jethro's legacy, either. Just knowing it was in the bank was no very great satisfaction. And now it _isn't_!"

She prepared a hearty meal for Tobias, who ate gratefully but in a more serious mood than he was wont to display. He went up to the lamp room again as soon as the meal was over.

"There don't seem to be any let-up in sight," he told Lorna, "and I feel like I'd ought to be right on the job, as the feller said."

She cleared away and washed the dishes. All the time the booming of the breakers and the crash of the wind against the trembling light tower made unhappy music in her ears.

She went to the door to look out. The sand barrens were being most viciously beaten by both wind and spray. She dreaded the walk back to Clay Head. When she went she thought she would better follow the sh.e.l.l road even if it was much the longer way home. Not a moving object appeared in the near-by landscape.

Suppose Ralph had boarded the fishing schooner? It was now probably far out to sea. Any craft must make a good offing in such a hurricane to be safe.

Ralph's possible peril kept recurring to the girl's anxious mind. The accusation that he had helped in the bank burglary might, in the end, prove ridiculous. But his peril from the elements could not be gainsaid.

Yes, she was angry with Ralph. He had shown, she thought, little appreciation of her personal attractions that day when they returned in his motor boat from Lower Trillion after the black squall. Lorna had been in a tender mood that afternoon and Ralph-he had practically ignored her!

That she had forbidden him to display any lover-like att.i.tude toward her did not enter into Lorna's consideration. There are times when even the most practical young woman does not expect a man to believe she means what she says.

In addition, the spectre of Cora Devine continually rose in Lorna's thoughts. There was a mystery between Ralph and that girl. It had to be explained before Lorna could readmit her old friend to her confidence.

When Lorna climbed the stairs once more to the lamp room it was mid-afternoon, and she realized that darkness would shut down very early upon sea and land. Already Miss Heppy's chickens had gone to roost.

Lorna had beaten her way out to the coop to feed them and found them cowering upon their perches. There was the element of threatening disaster in the very air.

As she came up into the lamp room the turmoil of the gale seemed to have increased tenfold. One could not have stood in safety upon the narrow gallery outside the windows.

Tobias had his old-fashioned "captain's gla.s.s" to his eye-an ancient telescope that had been round the world on many a voyage-and held it focused on a point some miles to the southward.

"What is it, Tobias?" Lorna asked, coming close to him before he realized her presence.

"I give it as my opinion that it is a craft of some kind, and she's making heavy weather of it. But I can't make out if it's a two-stick or a three-stick vessel. Seems to have lost some of her gear for'ard."

He allowed Lorna to take the heavy gla.s.s and aided her to fix upon the exact spot where, now and then, the masts of the laboring vessel heaved into view.

"Is she in danger, do you think, Tobias?" Lorna asked.

The question was expressed in her countenance, and Tobias nodded.

"Naterally!" he mouthed with vigor. "Any sort o' craft is in danger so near sh.o.r.e. I warrant the boys air watchin' her down to Lower Trillion.

She's about off their station now.

"Come on," he added, putting the gla.s.s away in its beckets and starting for the hatchway. "Let's go below for a spell." He did not want the girl to watch that staggering, gale-buffeted craft out there. "I feel sort o' famished for a cup o' something hot. Heppy usually has her teapot on the stove about this time, and she's gettin' me purt' near broke in to liking that old maid's tipple," and he chuckled.

But when they descended to the kitchen Tobias chanced to peer out of the window overlooking the road first of all. He e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"My soul and body! what's come to pa.s.s now, I want to know?"

Lorna ran to look over his shoulder. The big blue limousine belonging to the bank president had just halted before the lighthouse. The shabbily dressed detective was getting out.

"Oh!" Lorna cried. "What can he want here again?"

"I cal'late he thinks this is a bubblin' fount of information," grumbled Tobias. "Huh! But maybe we'll l'arn more than he does, Lorny."

They did. The detective entered unsmilingly when the lightkeeper opened the door.

"Have you heard anything more of that young Endicott?" he asked Tobias, merely nodding to the young woman.

"Wal, nothing that ye might call authoritative," the old man said slowly. "There's rumors--"

"Yes. We've run some of them down. He was mixed up in that break at the bank as sure as guns," the detective interposed with much a.s.surance.

"Oh!" gasped Lorna, sitting down suddenly.

The man flashed a glance at her that seemed questioning; but he continued to address Tobias.

"We have learned that he is a pretty shrewd fellow-up to a certain point. All these crooks fall down at some place or another."

Again Lorna spoke. "How dare you?" she demanded, but under her breath.

The man gave her another swift glance but made her no reply. He went on coolly to Tobias:

"He planned his alibi with some smartness. Shipped his trunk to a New Bedford wharf where a fishing schooner called the _Nelly G._ was tied up. Sent it on his ticket. But he slipped off the train and came back to Clinkerport in the evening. This was the night of the robbery, you understand."