Tobias o' the Light. James A. Cooper
word of criticism. But as her passion ebbed, Lorna's conscience pricked her sorely. She only appeared to fall asleep. In truth she remained very wide awake listening to the bellowing of the gale.
Suppose something should happen to Ralph out in the storm? It was hours, it seemed to her, before the wind calmed at all. She visualized her friend staggering along the road toward Clinkerport, back of the Clay Head cottages that were all empty at this time of year. Suppose he was overcome by the storm, and fell there, and was drifted over by the snow?
She lay and trembled at these thoughts; but she would not have admitted for the world that she cared!
After all, Ralph had been her playmate for years. Why, she could not remember when Ralph was not hanging upon the outskirts of the Nicholet family. He was as omnipresent, as she had told him, as Aunt Ida. And Miss Ida Nicholet had ever been Lorna's guardian.
The girl was the youngest of a goodly number of brothers and sisters; but her mother, Mr. Nicholet's second wife, had died at Lorna's birth. Miss Ida had come into the big house at Harbor Bar at that time and assumed entire control—at least of Lorna.
The other girls and boys had grown up and flown the nest. Mr. Nicholet was a busy man of studious habits who, if the housemaid had come into his library, kissed him on his bald crown, and asked him for twenty dollars, would have produced the money without question, said, "Yes, my child," and considered that he had done his duty by his youngest daughter.
Lorna had often passed him on the street and he had not known her.
But Mr. Nicholet subscribed to everything Miss Ida, his energetic sister, said. If she declared it was the right thing for Lorna to marry Ralph Endicott—that ended the matter as far as Mr. Nicholet was concerned. Lorna knew it to be quite useless to appeal to him.
By and by it began to rain—torrentially. This, following the snow which had drifted so heavily during the evening, somewhat relieved Lorna's anxiety. The rain would flood the roads and make them impassable, even if Ralph could repair his car; but no wanderer on foot would be drifted over by rain.
She heard Tobias go down and up the spiral staircase more than once. He even went out of the lighthouse on one occasion. That was soon after Ralph had gone and while the storm was still high. But the lightkeeper had quickly returned.
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 assured 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. Bassett?" 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, cocking an eye at Lorna, "for anybody who had to be out in it."
"Now, Tobias!" ejaculated 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 trespassers.
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