"All this is vanity, Ida," he said. "Financial gain is a very small part of life. We have existed, you and I, that is all-merely vegetated.

What we should have had-what was meant for us-has been lost. We are bankrupt, Ida."

"No, no!"

His grasp of her hands relaxed. Her left hand stole up, up-across his shoulder and around his neck. She pressed against him and at last her gaze fell.

"No, no!" she whispered. "Not bankrupt, Henry. It is not too late--"

A little later Miss Ida raised her head from the professor's shoulder.

Her eyes were tear-drenched, but her smile was warm.

"Henry," she said, "I had forgotten. Do you know that they accuse Ralph of helping to rob the Clinkerport Bank?"

CHAPTER XXVI

HIGH TIDE

Tobias Ba.s.sett for probably the second time in his life (the first occasion was when Conway Degger left the Twin Rocks Light) did not urge his visitor to lengthen his call. He followed the detective outside the door, however, and watched Rafe Silver get the blue limousine under way for Lower Trillion.

"I hope I see the last of you in this neighborhood right now," muttered the lightkeeper, referring to the detective. "You're a Jonah, that's what you are."

He went around to the exposed side of the tower and faced the wind, sheltering his eyes with his hand from flying spray and sand. He peered seaward.

"It's comin'," he thought. "I give it as my opinion that she's going to be a humdinger of a tide. Why, right now it's above usual high-water mark, and 'tis still two hours and more to full sea. It's comin'.

"And that schooner-if that is the _Nelly G._ we spied off to the south'ard-she's in a bad fix. No doubt on't. Oh, sugar! I wish that gal hadn't peeked through the old telescope and seen her."

He rather dreaded to return to the kitchen and face Lorna. Of course, he was free to admit, the girl had not shown that she really loved Ralph Endicott. For old time's sake, he told himself, she would be anxious for the young man's fate. But thus far she had not appeared as warmly interested in the absent man as the lightkeeper wanted her to be. Yet, somehow, Tobias felt if actual peril threatened Ralph, the girl "would take a tumble to herself." So he expressed it.

"Oh, sugar, yes!" he muttered. "She don't know just where she stands, that is all the trouble. It can't be possible them two young folks is going to drift apart same as Miss Ida and the professor did years ago-nossir! _I ain't goin' to let 'em!_"

Just how he expected to bring about the greatly-to-be-desired match he did not clearly see. He had stirred pity in Lorna's heart for Ralph when he had suggested to her that the Endicotts had lost their wealth.

Now that she knew this was not so, he wondered if the reaction in Lorna's mind would be disastrous for his matchmaking schemes. Pity was only akin to love sometimes.

"But, sugar! It don't always work out right, I do allow," grieved Tobias, wagging his head. "Women air ornery, I vum! Mebbe Lorna will turn right around t'other way and blame Ralph for what I done."

He returned to the kitchen therefore with lagging steps. Lorna was not there. It was growing dusk outside. On a night like this he often lit the lamp a little early. He would do so now-and had reason, with that craft he had spied wallowing in the offing.

He walked through the kitchen to the hall and started up the spiral stairway. He presumed Lorna was with Miss Heppy. But when he came to the first landing he distinctly heard a sound from the best chamber, the door of which was ajar.

He hesitated. It came again-the sound of a half-stifled sob and a murmured word. The old lightkeeper's heart was wrung with sympathy. He crept to the door.

It was Lorna. She had flung herself down beside the bed, her face hidden in her arms. Her shoulders quivered under the throe of her sobs.

She was more wrought upon by emotion than Tobias had ever before seen her!

Kindly impulse urged the old man to enter and offer encouragement. His better judgment, however, held him back. He quite knew Lorna's nature.

To display her deeper feelings in public had always been abhorrent to the girl.

The emotion that racked her now, Tobias realized, stirred Lorna's nature to its very dregs. As she rocked on her knees beside the bed, a cry burst from her lips which held the old man back:

"G.o.d, bring him back! Ralph! Ralph! Save him, dear G.o.d, for-for I love him! I love him so!"

The pa.s.sion of tears that followed brought a lump into the lightkeeper's throat that all but choked him, while the salt drops stung his eyelids.

He backed away from the bedroom door and tiptoed to the stairs.

He mounted softly to the lamp room. He felt that he had somehow been indelicate in listening to that cry of the girl's burdened heart. He had looked upon something which she had wished to keep hidden-a secret that Lorna had heretofore denied.

Tobias's weather-blown face was puckered into a very serious expression.

Used as he was to the sea and sea-going, having taken a man's part in the trade all his days, Ralph's peril aboard the _Nelly G._ seemed a matter of course in his mind. His sister's inbred terror of the sea (shared by so many longsh.o.r.e women) made little impression on Tobias Ba.s.sett.

But the sudden revelation of Lorna's despair shook his calmness. He had loved her ever since she and Ralph had toddled along the beach in rompers, each clinging to one of his hairy, tar-stained fingers. Now that she had grown to beautiful womanhood he was both fond of her and proud of her and had always considered that her growth and advancement was partly due to his watchful care during the long summers she had played along the beach.

Her deep concern now because of the gale and its threat began strongly to affect the lightkeeper. Under the depression of his discovery Tobias forgot to exult that at least half his matchmaking plans had come to fruition. Lorna loved Ralph!

If that was the _Nelly G._ out yonder-and he believed it was-and if Ralph was aboard her, what could he do to avert a calamity? Aside from his personal feeling for Ralph Endicott, the thought that Lorna was suffering, sobbing and praying in that whitewashed cell downstairs fanned into flame the lightkeeper's desire to help.

What could he do?

Tobias shook his head doubtfully. He took down the long telescope from its beckets against the rear wall of the lamp room and went forward to the great window. He had tightened the broad f.l.a.n.g.es that held the panes in place so that they no longer rattled. But there was no lessening of the voice of the gale. The rush of the wind past the vibrating tower still sounded a threatening tocsin.

Tobias adjusted the spy gla.s.s and focused it with practiced hand and eye upon the spot where the tossing masts of the laboring vessel heaved ever and anon into view. There was some lower canvas set. The craft was beating up the coast and was already much nearer the lighthouse than when he had last viewed it.

"She must be the _Nelly G._," muttered the lightkeeper. "Ain't no two ways about it. But what can have happened to her? Bob Pritchett is a purt' good navigator, I do allow. I don't see, after he picked up Ralph (that must ha' been arranged between 'em by telegraph) why the _Netty G._ didn't go kiting out to sea, this gale comin' so plain and all!

"It's a puzzle. Mm-m! Easy enough to see, though, why the crew at Lower Trillion ain't done nothing for her even if she is showing distress signals. Puttin' out their old lifeboat in the teeth of this wind would be just about suicidal, I give it as my opinion.

"Now, if she continues to beat up this way and can claw off the Twin Rocks here, she might make the mouth of the bay in safety. Yep, I cal'late that is what Bob Pritchett is figgerin' on doing.

"He couldn't make the breach at Lower Trillion. It's too narrow. But if he can win past these reefs here and get into Clinkerport Bay, the _Nelly G._ will be as snug as a bug in a rug. That's whatever!"

The surges coming in over the reefs raised such a clamor now that Tobias knew his fears for a high sea would be realized. He touched off the lamp, early as was the hour, waited only to see that the wick burned evenly, and then started below again.

As he went downstairs where the wind sounded less boisterously, the rush of the boiling surf up the strand and the sound of its retreat grew louder. He got into his slicker, buckled the throat-latch of his tarpaulin hat, and ventured out of doors once more. But he went no farther than the broad stone that lay before the door.

Up past the lighthouse raced a waist-high roller, to lap over the road and drain away into the cattail swamp on the other side. Its retreat tore away a full line of Miss Heppy's c.o.c.klesh.e.l.ls that bordered the yard. Again the sea rolled in, and like a ravenous beast it tore and bit at the road's edge, guttering and washing away the sand and hard-packed sh.e.l.l in great mouthfuls.

"Dad fetch it!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the worried lightkeeper. "I give it as my opinion that we're going to be purt' nigh surrounded by water afore this is over."

The waves were rolling in across the sands between the Light and the Clay Head. The road to Clinkerport would soon be shut off completely.

Tobias was aware that the door had been opened behind him.

"Oh, Mr. Ba.s.sett! That wave! Look at it! Why-why, I can't get home!"