Dawn came at last, clutching at the window with wan fingers. The pale light grew slowly. Lorna heard Tobias rattling the stove-hole covers as he built the kitchen fire. Then the odor of coffee reached her nostrils, and Miss Heppy awoke.

CHAPTER IV

PROPHECIES

Lorna appeared in the lighthouse kitchen with red eyelids and the bruised look about her eyes that usually advertises the lack of sleep in the case of all dark-eyed people. But she smiled and thanked Miss Heppy and Tobias briskly for their kindness.

"I am sure I do not know what I should have done if you had not taken me in. Did the storm do much damage in your best chamber, Miss Heppy?"

"I ain't had time to see, child," replied the spinster. "Tobias will have to get a new winder frame, I cal'late. You got it boarded up tight, Tobias?"

"Tight's the word," her brother a.s.sured her.

"I hope nothing has happened to our house on Clay Head," Lorna said.

"Not likely. Them storm shutters and doors Miss Ida insisted on putting on are a good thing, I allow," the lightkeeper observed.

"We'd ought to have outside blinds to our lower windows," his sister complained. "But the Government don't think so."

"Now, don't let's get onto politics," said Tobias, his eyes twinkling.

"Ye know, Lorny, Heppy and me votes dif'rent tickets, and jest at present she's ag'in the Government."

"Oh, you hush!" said Miss Heppy, as Lorna's laugh chimed in unison with Tobias's mellow chuckle.

"Is it going to clear, Mr. Ba.s.sett?" the girl asked.

"I guess likely. Ain't been but one storm so fur that didn't clear.

And that's this one. But I give it as my opinion that it was a bad night. Bad," he added, c.o.c.king an eye at Lorna, "for anybody who had to be out in it."

"Now, Tobias!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his sister.

"Them on shipboard, I mean, o' course," the lightkeeper hastened to say.

Lorna ignored this byplay. She would not reveal in any case that she had felt anxiety for Ralph. She would only show interest in the condition of the Nicholet house on the bluff, and after breakfast she bundled up against the cutting gale that still blew, and ventured to journey cross-lots to the summer residences.

The road, as Lorna had supposed, was badly washed by the rain where it was not drifted with mushy snow. She wore Miss Heppy's overshoes and waded ankle deep in slush as she crossed the barrens toward the steep ascent of the Clay Head. At the foot of this bluff she struck into the patrol-path-that well-defined trail made by the surfmen who patrol every yard of the outer Cape Cod coast, from the Big End at the tip near Provincetown, down to Monomoy Point south of Chatham.

It was slippery under foot, and the wind was still strong. The clouds were breaking, however, and Lorna could see clear across the wide-mouthed bay. She observed a gleam of light reflected from the cupola of the life-saving station at Upper Trillion. A steam tug towing a brick barge, that had run into Clinkerport ahead of the storm, was now breasting the after-swell, putting out to sea.

The Nicholet house was the first in the row of summer houses which overhung the beach toward Clinkerport. Lorna was sheltered from the wind when she approached the side door to which she had the key.

As she mounted the steps she noted with surprise that one of the cellar windows right at hand was uncovered. The plank shutter lay upon the snow, and there were marks about the window that might have been made by somebody entering the house.

"And such a night as last night was," murmured the amazed girl. "I can scarcely believe there was a thief here."

Indeed, marauders of any character were seldom a menace upon the Cape.

The summer people who occupied the houses along Clay Head merely locked their doors in winter and left them until the next season without fear of trespa.s.sers.

Lorna slowly fitted the key in the lock and opened the door. She entered softly. Could it be possible that an intruder was now in the house?

At the left of this side entry was a small sitting-room. When the outer door was closed she distinctly felt a warm current of air from between the draperies that had been left hanging in the sitting-room doorway.

Amazed, she stepped hurriedly forward and held aside the curtain to look in. There was a smouldering fire in the grate. Lying outstretched upon the floor, with a rug wrapped about him, was a man. He was asleep, and for the moment Lorna could not see his face, nor did she imagine who he could be.

She tiptoed around the table, and then she saw the sleeper's flaxen head. Suddenly he started, rolled over, and sat up. He opened sleep-clouded eyes.

"Is-is that you, Lorna?" he yawned.

The girl's face flamed and her eyes fairly sparked with wrath. She made a futile gesture with both hands as she backed away from Ralph Endicott.

"Oh, you-you--"

She could not articulate her disgust. Of all the perfectly useless fellows she had ever heard of, Ralph took the palm!

Without uttering another word the girl left the room and the house.

Ralph had managed to spoil everything, after all. He had not gone to Clinkerport and telephoned to Harbor Bar. The tongue of scandal would not be stilled as she had hoped it might. And Lorna Nicholet considered it quite scandalous for her friends to believe that she and Ralph Endicott were "as good as engaged."

"I'll never forgive him! I'll never forgive him!" she cried over and over, as she tramped back to the light.

She made no comment then to either Miss Heppy or Tobias about what she had found at the house. She did not even notice the old lightkeeper's sly glances. He had followed Ralph's footprints by lantern-light in the storm the night before and knew where the young man had taken shelter after being driven from the lighthouse by Lorna's sharp tongue.

Endicott did not appear that day at the Twin Rocks Light. But he must have gone on to Clinkerport after Lorna's unexpected visit to the house on Clay Head aroused him, for the next day-the sh.e.l.l road having become pa.s.sable again for motor cars-he came out with a truck from the garage to tow his roadster into town.

"You can go back with the garage man and me, and I will hire a car to take you home to Harbor Bar to-night," Endicott said sullenly enough, to Lorna.

"I will go to Clinkerport with the garage man," the girl promptly rejoined. "But you need not bother about me after I arrive there. I can manage to get home by myself. The trains are running."

"Well, I telephoned your Aunt Ida I would bring you home," he said gloomily. "They-they were some stirred up about us."

"They need be stirred up no further about us. I tell you I have got through with you, Ralph Endicott-for good and all! I will not be forced by my family to endure your company."

"It's fifty-fifty," he rejoined. "You don't have to ride any high horse about it. I'm no more pleased with the prospect of catering to your whims, I a.s.sure you."

"You are no gentleman!" she declared, her little fists clenched.

"At least, I am telling you the truth, Lorna," he said grimly. "Perhaps being a gentleman precludes one's being candid."

"Oh-you!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed again and turned her back on him.

Tobias watched them depart with puckered face. Separately the young folk had shaken hands with the lightkeeper and his sister, and thanked them warmly for their hospitality. But when the two cars started Lorna sat up stiffly, "eyes front," beside the garage man and would not look back for fear of seeing Ralph Endicott in the rear car.

"Just as friendly to each other as a couple o' strange dogs," observed Tobias. "She's on her ear, sure enough. And Ralphie is just as stuffy as they make 'em. What do you reckon will come of it, Heppy?"

"I know one thing, Tobias, and that ain't two," declared his sister flatly. "None o' your interference is goin' to help matters. Don't you think it."