XII.ON WHICH SIDE VICTORY?"Well, how goes the temperance fight, Dave?" asked Dick one day."We are pushing it. We have organized our society, and are going to hold meetings.""The fight," as Dick called it, was conducted on the principles of peace; but if peaceable it was not sleepy. A series of meetings of various kinds had been carefully planned, and of these one was a young people's meeting. All the exercises, like speaking and singing, were to be conducted by Shipton's youth. Bart expected to have a humble part in this meeting, and say a few Scripture verses bearing on the sin of liquor-drinking. His father was at home, and Bart did wish that in some way he could be persuaded to go to this meeting. There did not seem to be much prospect of his attendance. One day he received a mortifying check to his course. Having drunk up all his money at the public-house, he was roughly turned out of doors. This time he realized the disgrace of his situation; and the next morning, to granny's astonishment, he did not visit the saloon. To her still greater surprise, he did not leave the house all day. He even sawed and cut some wood for the fire. This was deservedly ranked as a wonder in the history of the man. When Bart returned at night his father was upstairs, "lying down," granny reported."Ain't that queer, granny?" whispered Bart."I haven't known anything like it, Bartie. He's been cuttin' more wood this afternoon. P'raps he is sick."Not sick, but mortified and penniless. To such people publicity is not attractive."I don't know what it is," said granny, "but Miss Perkins says she hearn there has been trouble down in the saloon."Miss Perkins was a gossip with a news-bag that seemed to have the depth and roominess of the Atlantic."Awful place, ain't it, granny, where they sell rum?"Granny turned on him--turned quickly, fiercely."Bartholomew!"She rarely addressed him that way. When she did she meant something serious. Bart's timorous face shrank before her sharp, fierce gaze."Bartholomew, I want you to promise never to sell rum. Put your hand on this Bible!""Oh, I--I never will sell.""And you won't drink it? Promise!""Never!"It was like Hamilcar of Carthage taking his son Hannibal to the altar, and there making him swear eternal hatred to Rome. Then Bart went softly out of the room.Into some refuge he desired to steal, tell God that he, Little Mew, was weak; that he wanted to be taken care of; that he did wish to get help somehow for his father--help to be better--and he wanted to remember granny. Up over the steep, narrow, worn stairway he stole into his little bedroom, that, small and humble, had yet been a precious refuge to him, and his bed had been a boat bearing him away across waters of forgetfulness of poverty and hunger to the restful isle of dreams. If he could only forget now! He could pray, and if prayer does not make forgetful it makes restful. He leaned against his bed and told all his trouble to God--told him of his desire for his father, how much he wished God would make his father a new heart; how he wanted help for himself, that he might be kind and patient. It was touching to hear his boyish outcries, as kneeling he pleaded for one so weak, so lost, as his father. Then he went downstairs again. The moment his feet were heard on the stairs, Bart's father, who had been lying in the dark on the side of the bed nearest to the wall, arose, sighed, and went down also. Bart was standing in the little entry leading to the kitchen."Bart--I--want to be--" The father stopped.It was not so much anything he said, for he said nothing definite, but it was his tone that encouraged Bart, and he listened eagerly."I want to be a good father to you, Bart; God knows I do."What? Bart had never heard such language before from this parent with agitated voice and frame. Bart caught instantly at a hope that had just begun to take shape. Would his father go to the temperance meeting with him?"Father, your ship, they say, won't sail to-morrow; and if it don't, will you go to the temperance meeting with me to-morrow night?""Bartholomew, if my ship don't sail, then I will go with you."He turned and went upstairs again."O Bart," exclaimed granny, "let us pray that God will keep the winds off shore and not let Thomas's ship get to sea!"The next day the winds still were unfavourable, and Bart and granny looked at one another with happier faces than they had been carrying ever since Thomas Trafton's return."Granny, the wind is not fair yet," Bart would exclaim, after eying the vane on the nearest church steeple. Granny would then take her turn, and go out, her apron thrown over her head, and watch the vane. At last they could say, "The ship won't go to-night."When ever before had that vane been watched to see if it indicated a wind that would keep Thomas Trafton at home?"Hear me say my verses once more," Bart whispered to his grandmother; and assured that his contribution to the evening's exercises was in readiness, he went with his father to the temperance meeting. Bart's place was among the speakers, and they filled several pews, their bright, hopeful faces lifted above the railings of the pews like flowers above the garden-bed. Bart's father was in the rear of the church. Bart was afraid to leave him at that distant, unguarded point; but he had promised Bart faithfully to stay, and not go out. Was ever any attendant at a meeting in a more discouraged, helpless mood than Thomas Trafton? He had been thinking, somewhat as he was accustomed to think when off at sea and away from temptation, that never again would he touch liquor; but could he keep his resolution if he made one? He felt burdened with a weighty desire, burdened with a sense of shame, burdened with a conviction of weakness, burdened every way and always.The meeting began. Mr. James Tolman conducted it, but only to call the names of those participating in it. The recitations were varied. Several had quite pretentious speeches, and others gave only a modest extract from some appeal in poetry or prose. There were those who simply had Bible verses, and in this section Bart Trafton had a place. His verses were on the sin of intemperance. When his turn was reached he came to the platform quite readily, and then turned toward the audience. He looked once, saw great, bewildering rows of faces, and all his courage left him. He could not look again at those hundreds of staring eyes. He dropped his head, blushed, and every idea he had taken with him to the platform seemed hopelessly to have left him. Like birds, those verses had flown away, and how could he possibly call them back from that sudden flight? However, he did catch one bird. He could think of one word--"Wine!" He resolved to begin with that. A decoy bird will sometimes bring a flock about it, and if he said that one word he might think of the others. "Wine--" he screamed. Then he waited for the rest of the flock. He shrieked again, "Wine!" Once more, "W-w-wine!"People were now smiling to see that timorous, blushing, stammering lad on the platform, and some of the children broke out into an embarrassing titter. Bart, turned in helpless confusion to Mr. Tolman."Forgot it," he whispered,"Say something," said Mr. Tolman, in an encouraging tone.Something? What would it, could it be? Bart gave one timid glance at the tittering, gaping rows before him, and feeling that he must say something, gave the first words that came into his mind. Annie Fletcher had taught them to him. Bart's voice was sharp and high, and it pierced all the space between Thomas Trafton and the platform, and the father plainly heard the boy."'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'"Some of the people wondered what that had to do with intemperance. Thomas Trafton did not wonder. He heard nothing else. He did not notice whether Bart stayed on the platform or left it; he did not notice who followed Bart; he heard only those verses. The pew was an old one, and when improvements had been made in the church, this pew was not touched, but, being so far away from notice, was left undisturbed in all its odd and antique furnishings. Thomas Trafton never forgot the exact place where he sat and heard through his son's voice this short gospel that came down from God's lofty throne of love. He would in later days come to this old pew and gladly occupy it and recall this night of the temperance meeting. He would hear again the invitation given in his boy's piercing voice, and again would be repeated, though not as vividly, his experience that night; for he had an experience. It seemed to him as if while sitting there burdened and weary, yet willing, longing to find relief, One came to him,--One who had in his brow the print of thorns, and in his side the mark of a spear, and in his feet the scar of driven nails. Thomas Trafton met his Saviour there, and into peace and strength came the soul of the once drunkard.Not long after this the west wind blew, its strong wings beating fast and sweeping Thomas Trafton's vessel far away to sea. Very few knew of his surrender to God, which brought a victory over his appetite. The minister of the church, Mr. Potter, knew, and Dave Fletcher knew.XIII.WHAT TO DO NEXT.When Dave Fletcher became a clerk with Mr. Tolman, he knew he was taking the place of another who might come back in three months, and back he did come."Sorry, David, I haven't a place for you," said Mr. Tolman."Well," replied Dave, "if there isn't a place here I must find one elsewhere."But where? He knew that his father did not need him at home, as he had already made plans for all needed farm-work."I don't want to go home and be just a burden, hanging round," reflected Dave. "Then I must find work here."He talked over the situation with Dick Pray."What would I do, Dave? Well," said Dick, putting his hands deep down in his pockets, "I should advertise and--wait.""I mean to advertise, but I think I had better stir round also.""Just as well to say you want something--say it loud and strong, you know--and then let others ask what is wanted."Dick did like to sound a trumpet, giving as loud a blast as possible, and then let the world run up and see what "Lord Dick" wanted."Oh, I shall advertise, and stir round also, though I don't just fancy it, and I can't say what will come from it."And what did come the first day?Nothing.The second day?Nothing.The third day?Nothing."It is getting to be fearfully tiresome," said Dave the fourth day. "I have inquired in all directions, but I can't seem to hear of anything. Oh dear! I shall always know after this how to pity folks out of work. Well, I suppose I must keep at it. If I stop, I shall surely get nothing; if I keep at it, I may be successful. Here goes for Squire Sylvester, though I don't know why I should ask him."He mounted the steps leading to the door of Squire Sylvester's office, and hesitatingly entered that impressive business sanctum. Squire Sylvester was standing at his desk biting the end of a lead-pencil, and studying the columns of figures on the paper before him."Squire Sylvester, do--do--you know of any vacant situation in business?" asked Dave.The squire looked up."Humph! Nothing to do?""Can't find it, sir.""Well, I wish I could find somebody to work for me.""Have you anything?" asked Dave eagerly, thinking how nice it would be to occupy a desk in the squire's office and assist in the management of such business enterprises as the building of ships or the sailing of them."I have been trying to find somebody to cut up some wood for me and stow it away, but I can't get hold of any unoccupied talent."Dave's countenance dropped. It went up again, though."It will pay a week's board, maybe," he said to himself."I--I'll take that job, sir. I know how to swing an axe, and I'd rather be doing that than go loafing about.""Good! I thought there was some stuff in you worth having."Dave disregarded this compliment, and asked, "When shall I go to work?""Any time. Saw is behind the chopping-block in my shed, hung on a nail, or ought to be; and axe, I guess, is keeping the company of the block.""I will begin to-day. There will be a comfort in knowing I am doing something.""That is a good spirit, young man; and let me assure you if you stick to that style of doing things, some day you will be able to take comfort--a lot of it."The squire went to the window of the office when Dave had left, and watched him cross the street in the direction of the squire's home."I like that young chap," murmured the squire.Dave found the house of his employer, left word at the door that he was sent to look after the wood, and went into the shed."Here is the chopping-block, and there is the axe, and the saw is all right. I will take my tools outdoors, where my wood is," said Dave.It was a day in early spring. Snow still clung to the corners of gardens, and hid away under the bushes, and lay thick on the shaded side of buildings. The sun, though, was strengthening its fires every day, and had coaxed a few bluebirds to come north, and say that warm weather had surely started from its southern home, and would be here in due season, though a bit delayed, perhaps. Two hours later, Dave's axe was striking music out of the pieces of wood the saw had first played a tune on; and it is that kind of music that helps a man to feel independent and self-reliant, contented and cheerful."Hollo! that you?" sang out a voice. "How are you, old man?"Dave looked up, and saw Dick Pray nodding over the fence."The old man has found work, you see," replied Dave."None of that sort for me," sang out Dick.In about half-an-hour another voice was calling to him across the garden fence. This was not the flexible, smooth, rounded voice of youth addressing Dave, but there were the tones of an old man. There was a world of friendship, though, in this old man's salutation, "How d'ye do? how d'ye do?"Dave turned toward it, and there was the old light-keeper, Toby Tolman."May I come in?" asked the light-keeper, approaching the gate."Oh yes, sir, do! Glad to see you."The light-keeper came up the gravelled walk, approached the pile, and said, "How much more of a job have you got?""Oh, a couple of days.""Well, then, do you want another?""Yes, sir. But how did you know I was here?""May, my granddaughter, knew, and she told me. I was at the house, you see. My job for you is to go to the lighthouse and be my assistant. She told me, and I said to myself, 'There's the man for me!'""You don't mean it! Why, where's Timothy Waters?""Got all through.""His time up?""Well, he went before he wanted to. Wasn't just particular in reckoning what belonged to others."Dave recalled at once the little affair about the two pennies."Who's at the light now, Mr. Tolman?""Oh, an old hand, who is just piecing me out at this time when I need help. He leaves day after to-morrow. Now, come! I'm up here trying to look somebody up to be my assistant. Can't bring it about at once; but if you'll go and stay a while I think you'll get the berth, and I don't know of anybody I'd like better to have.""And I should like to come, too, and I will, just as soon as I finish this job.""Maybe the squire would let you off now.""I daresay.""I'd like to take you back with me to-day.""And I'd like to go, but I'd better finish up.""You're right, on second thought. The squire wouldn't hesitate a moment, I venture to say; but then people sometimes grant us favours when at the same time they say to themselves, 'I wish they hadn't asked me.' You stay and finish your job."The second day after this the task was completed, the saw going to its place on the nail behind the chopping-block, and the axe finding quarters near by."There!" said the squire: "I don't know that I ever paid for a job with greater satisfaction."He was handling a roll of bills as he said this, and handed one of these to Dave."It is too much, sir.""Oh no. That was a peculiar pile of wood, and it took a peculiar kind of merit to get the better of it. For ordinary wood," said the squire, his eyes blinking, "I should only pay an ordinary price; but this wood was something more than ordinary, and of course the price goes up. When I can do you a favour, you let me know."That day toward sunset a dory was gently tossing at the foot of the lighthouse on Black Rocks."Hollo!" shouted Dave, looking up from the boat and aiming his voice at the door above."Oh, that you?" asked the light-keeper, quickly appearing in the doorway and looking down. "My man will be here in a jiffy and go home in your boat, as we fixed it, you know."Dave exchanged the boat for the lighthouse, and the retiring assistant quit the lighthouse for the boat, then rowing to his home. Dave heard that night the wind humming about the lantern, saw the friendly rays beckoning from other lighthouses, heard the wash of the waves around the gray tower of stone, and felt that he had reached a home.XIV.GUESTS AT THE LIGHTHOUSE.In a month Dave Fletcher was established at the light on Black Rocks as assistant-keeper--a position that would bring him a far handsomer salary than could any present clerkship at Shipton. This berth was not secured without a struggle by Dave's friends, as several candidates were willing to take the duties and profits of the place."You've got the place, though others wanted it," said the keeper, returning from town one day and wiping his round, red face with his handkerchief. "News came to-day. I don't know but you would have lost it, but they say a friend of yours interceded and told them up and down you must have it any way.""Who was it?""Somebody that said he had seen you run a saw and knew you could run a lighthouse. That's what folks tell me he said.""Oh, Squire Sylvester!""Yes. Queer feller; but he isn't all growl, though he does look like it, maybe."Some time after this there were visitors at the light. One was expected, the other was not. The first was Bart Trafton, brought by the light-keeper one soft, sunny April day. Bart was very much interested in the lantern.[image]"Bart was very much interested in the lantern of the lighthouse."Page 159"Can I go up with you and see the lantern?" he asked."Oh yes," said Dave, leading Bart up the iron stairway that mounted from room to room."There!" said Bart, looking round on the glass windows enclosing the lantern and the lamp in its centre: "I think this is a dreadful interestin' place.""I think so too, Bart.""And what I think is interestin' is that lamp in the centre. Why, granny uses a lamp that, it seems to me, is no bigger than that, but it can't throw anywhere near such a light as that. I saw your light last night.""You did? where?""From the hill behind our house. I went up there and saw it.""I did not know that. Then we could signal to one another.""Signal?""Yes, this way. Supposing, now, I should hang a lantern out on the side of the lighthouse toward the land, toward your home, and you could see it: you might take it as a sign that I wanted--well--we will say--a doctor.""I think I could see it with father's spy-glass; it is real powerful. Say, will you try it to-morrow night? You hang it out, and I will take father's spy-glass and see if I can make out anything. Then I will send you word by the mail. You don't think it is too far from our house to the light?""Too far to see? oh no. Now, I said a man might want a doctor here. I have often thought if one of us was sick--and you know the keeper is getting old--and if the other couldn't get off to bring a doctor, it might be a very serious thing for the sick man.""Well, if you are in trouble and will hang out a light, and I see it, I will tell the people, and they will get to you."Dave thought no more of this, but silently said, "I wonder if I haven't something else interesting to show the boy! Yes, I have got it."He went down from the lantern to the kitchen, and took from its shelf the strange box of sandal-wood, whose story Dave already knew.The light-keeper now repeated to Bart the tale of the drifting relic. He held it to his ear. Did the boy think it was a shell--that it would murmur a song of wave and cloud and the broad sunshine sweeping down on lonely surf-washed ledges?"It won't talk," said the light-keeper, beaming on him.Bart shook his head."I wish it would talk," thought the keeper. "It might tell about that man whom we picked up and brought into the light, and who seemed to know something about it. I wonder if he will ever call for it!"He spoke of it to Dave afterward. The two were up on the lantern-deck at sunset looking off upon the sea. The water was still and glassy. It was heaving gently, as if with the dying day it too was dying, but feebly pulsating with life. One vast surface of shining gray, it gradually darkened till it was a mass of shadows across which were drawn the lines of white surf cresting the ledges."Several vessels in the harbour," said Dave."Yes: they have been coming down from Shipton this afternoon; but the wind has all died away, and they seem to have made up their mind to anchor there to-night. It is getting cool. Perhaps we had better go down," said the keeper, shrugging his shoulders. While within the lantern he glanced at the lamp, and then descended to the kitchen. Without the twilight deepened. Out of the gloom towered the lighthouse, bearing aloft its guiding, warning rays. The keeper was in the kitchen, trimming an old lantern which had done him much faithful service. That small visitor, Bart, had gone with Dave up into the lantern, anxious to see the working of the lamp.The keeper lighted his lantern, and then started for the fog-signal tower. He was descending the stairs, when he heard a cry outside of the lighthouse."Somebody at the foot of the ladder, I guess, wants me," concluded the keeper, "and I will go to the door and see who it is."He went to the door, lantern in hand, and looked down."Hollo, there!" sang out a man from the shadows below. "Shall I come up?""Ay, ay!" responded the keeper. "Low water down there, isn't it, so you can come up the ladder?""I guess so. I will make fast and try the ladder."The keeper heard the steps of somebody on the ladder, and then a man's form wriggled up through the hole in the platform outside the door."I get up with less trouble to you than I did the last time I was here," said the man.The keeper looked at him."Ho! this you?" he asked."Nobody else."It was the man who one day, when intoxicated, had been rescued from the bar, and the next morning had shown singular interest in the little box of sandalwood."Come up!" said the keeper, leading the man to the kitchen."I have been some time coming, haven't I?""Better late than never. Always glad to see people. Take that chair before the fire, and make yourself at home. I did not know as I should ever see you again. You are a Shipton man?" asked the keeper bluntly."Yes, I belong to Shipton; but then I am off about all the time. I think I have seen you on the street there.""I was thinking myself I had seen you, but I couldn't say when, except that time you were at the lighthouse.""Have you got that box now?""Oh yes. Here it is. Nobody has come to claim it."He took the box down from its shelf and placed it on the table.The keeper's companion said, "Now I will tell you the story about that box, and this letter, too, will confirm it."As he spoke he took a letter from his pocket and opened it."The man who wrote that was an old shipmate, Grant Williams, a warm friend, and faithful too. He knew I had a weakness, and used to say he was afraid his shipmate would get into the breakers. He sent me a letter from a foreign port; here it is. You look at it. You will see that he gave me some good advice. He laid it all down like a chart; but I was a poor hand to steer by it. 'I expect to sail for Shipton in a Norwegian bark,' he wrote (I think he was born in Norway himself, but had been a long time in America), 'and I am going to get and bring my old shipmate a present of a box of sandal-wood, and I shall pack a few keepsakes into it. I will put my picture in, just to make it seem all the more like a present from me. I will put your initials and mine on the under side of the box. I will leave it at Shipton with your father if you are not there. And now don't forget this: it is to be a reminder of my desire that you should let liquor alone. When you see it, think of an old shipmate, and look at my face you will find in the box.' The first time I saw the box was that morning after the night you found me in a state that was no credit to the one found. I knew the ship had been wrecked, and only that, and when I saw the face of my old shipmate, and knew that he had been lost on the bar where I came pretty near losing my own life through what he warned me against, I--I--felt it. I didn't see how I could take the box until I was in a condition to give some promise, you know, that I would be a better man; and now I hope I am, God being my helper.""Well, I think it is plain proof that you are the one whom the man Williams meant, and the owner of this box, if those are your initials on the bottom--if--"The keeper was about to ask the man for his name, but the sound of a light step tripping downstairs arrested their conversation, and both turned toward the stairway.It was Bart Trafton. He looked up, stopped, started forward, and exclaimed, "Why, father!""This you, Bart?" said Thomas Trafton. "How came you here?--My boy, Mr. Tolman. My vessel is off there in the stream, and while waiting for the wind I just rowed over."There they stood, side by side, Bart and his father, while the keeper was rising to hand the box to Thomas Trafton. The lighthouse kitchen never presented a more interesting scene than that of the reformed sailor in the presence of his oft-abused child, taking into his hands this gift, that had survived a wrecking storm, to be not only a pledge of the friendship of the dead, but to the living a stimulus to right-doing and a warning against wrong.Thomas Trafton rowed back to the vessel that night. Bart was carried to town the next day. Bart reached home at sundown, and first told granny about the affair of the box as far as he had been able to pick up the threads of the details and weave them into a story; then he asked, "Where is father's spy-glass?""Behind the clock, Bartie," said granny. "What do you want it for?""Just to look off," he said, seizing the glass and bearing it out-doors. Granny followed him into the yard and there halted; for Bart was going farther, already bestriding the fence."Where is that boy going?" wondered granny."Bartie!" she called aloud, "it is a-gittin' too late to see things clear."He was now mounting a hill beyond the yard."Back in a moment, granny!" he shouted.She soon saw his figure standing out, clear and distinct, against the western sky, and he was elevating the glass."Too soon to see anything yet," he said, when he returned."Where you lookin', child?""Off to the lighthouse.""They haven't more than lighted her up.""I know it. I was too early.""You want to see the light? You won't have to take a glass for that; you just wait.""I want to see something else. You come with me, granny, when I go again.""Sakes, child, what you up to?"Later two figures crept up the hill, one carrying a spy-glass."There, granny!" said the bearer of the glass. "Now you look off to the light at Black Rocks, and right under it see if you can't see another light--a little one.""La, child," declared granny, vainly looking through the glass, "I can't see nothin'. This thing pokes out what there is there.""Eh? can't you, granny?" replied Bart, levelling the glass toward the harbour. "I see the light. And--and--I think--I see a--something else underneath. Seems like a little star under a moon."The next day this was dropped in the post-office:--"DEAR DAVE,--I saw your lantern, I know. Did you hang it out? Your friend, BART."Dave answered this in person within a week."I'm having a holiday," he said to granny--"off for a day--and thought I would call. I want you, please, to say for me to Bart I got his note, and that I did hang out my lantern the night that he looked for it.""Now, did you ever see sich a boy? He has been up every night to look for that lantern, and he says he feels easier if he don't see it.""You tell him not to worry. We are very comfortable. A person might live there a century and nothing happen to them."Notwithstanding this assertion about the safety of century-serving keepers, Bart would sometimes steal out in the dark and climb the bare, lonely hill. Then he would search the black horizon."There's the reg'lar light," he would say, "but I don't see anything more. All right!"XV.THE STORM GATHERING.There was a tongue of land not far from the lighthouse known as "Pudding Point." How long the water-trip to it might be depended upon the state of the tide. In the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse there was, in the direction of this Pudding Point, such an accumulation of sandy ridges that at low-water the voyage was only a quarter of a mile. At high tide all the yellow flats were covered, and an oarsman must pull his boat across half-a-mile of water to go from the light to the point. Sometimes Dave had occasion to visit Pudding Point. A few houses were there, and they might be able to supply an article needed at the light, and that would save a trip to Shipton. One sunny morning Dave had rowed over from the light, and was drawing his boat up the sands, when he noticed a familiar figure striding along a ridge beyond the beach. It was a person of handsome carriage, and one well aware of it."I should know that form anywhere," said Dave. "Hollo, Dick!" he shouted.Dick Pray came running down a sandy slope and gave Dave his hand."I am trying to hunt up Thomas Trafton," said Dave. "I believe he has a fish-house around here, hasn't he?""You'll find him on that ledge a little way back."Dave hunted up the fish-house--a black, weather-beaten box. Thomas Trafton was spreading fish on the long fish-flakes in the rear of his humble quarters."That you, Dave?" asked the fisherman. "I thought I saw you down on the shore a half-hour ago.""I was over at the light half-an-hour ago.""Then it was Timothy Waters.""How so?""Don't you know that if one takes a back view of you and Timothy, although he is really older than you by half-a-dozen years, it wouldn't be easy to tell you apart? Let me see. You are twenty-one?""So they say at home.""Timothy is twenty-seven at least.'"And I look like Timothy?""Rear view only, and I can only tell it is him if in walking he throws his arms out. You never do that.""I am not anxious to resemble Timothy Waters. I thought he was at sea.""Off and on. He is now, I suppose, in that craft off in the stream.""TheRelentless?""That's the one. I know I am glad to be out of her. My health improved steadily after quitting her. I am going to be at home, fishing, this season.""How do they all do at home?""Oh, comfortable.""Bart is getting to be a big boy, isn't he?""Yes, he is. He thinks a good deal of you. Now, you know that habit he got into once--""What was that?""Of taking my spy-glass and going out to look at the lighthouse at night--""To see if I had hung out a lantern because we were disabled--by sickness, you know, or something of the kind?""That is it. Well, his granny says he hasn't wholly dropped it now. She will see him go out, and when he comes back she will say, 'Anything?' 'Nothing,' he will say.""Oh, I guess there never will be any need of his looking.""No, I s'pose not; but it shows his interest.""Yes; I am thankful for that.--Well, let us have a fish to broil; have come out for that."Dave received his fish, paid for it, and very soon turned away, striding off energetically in the direction of his boat.When Dave returned to the lighthouse, the tide, gradually dropping, had uncovered the rocky foundations, and the water was playing with the fringes of seaweed all about the rocks."How gracefully that seaweed rises and falls! Those curves of its motion are very delicate.--Hollo! what is that?" he asked.Looking at the foundations, he saw in a crevice a little object that was not a lump of rock-weed or a rock, and what was it?"A pocket-book!" said Dave, leaning out of his boat and picking up this relic tightly wedged between the stones. "I'll look at that when I get up into the kitchen."Reaching the kitchen, he hastily opened the pocket-book, noticed that it was empty, and then placed it to dry on a shelf. It was very peaceful in the kitchen, and the stove purred and the clock ticked contentedly and quietly as ever. But where was the light-keeper? his assistant wondered."Upstairs probably," was the thought in reply; and yet this consideration, reasonable as it might seem at the moment, did not dispose of the question wholly. True, in a lighthouse, where one might say if a man were not downstairs he must be upstairs, that he could not be "out in the yard" or "in the cellar," Dave's conclusion seemed to be correct. He felt, however, a peculiar sense of loneliness. If Dave were a person given to moods, if he were likely to be sombre, he might have said it was only a fancy; but for one of his temperament that was unusual. Dave with reason had been somewhat worried about his principal. Toby Tolman was growing old. It had been in certain quarters openly said that he was too old for his position. He had been such an efficient keeper, and he had as his assistant a man so valuable, that no one cared to make an effort to remove him from his position. The person who would probably be benefited by any change, and would be invited to take charge of the light, was David Fletcher, and he would not move, for that reason, against his kind old friend. Dave had worked all the harder to fill up any deficiencies on the part of his principal, and the principal would doubtless have been invited to step out if his assistant had not worked so hard to keep him in. Often Dave noticed an indisposition in the light-keeper to attend to that fraction of the duties of the place falling to him, and Dave rightly attributed the indisposition to inability. During the watch-hours belonging to the keeper his assistant had sometimes found him asleep, and when the rest-hours belonging to the keeper arrived, he would unduly prolong his sleep in the morning, and neglect duties to which he had hitherto given prompt attention. Dave also noticed that Mr. Tolman lingered at an unusual length over his Bible. It would be an exceedingly good sign if it could be said of many people that they spent twice as much time as previously with their Bibles; but when a man usually giving to this habit an hour and a half may take three hours, neglecting other daily duties, there may be occasion for inquiry into the change. The light-keeper did not himself notice this peculiarity about to be mentioned, and yet any one seeing the passages read would have appreciated it. The keeper now found unusual comfort in the psalms that spoke of God as a hiding-place, a refuge, a high tower. Was he like the mariner who sees the storm pressing him closely and hastens to find the harbour where he can let fall each straining sail, like the tired bird that drops its wings because it has found its nest?Dave had other reason for worry. There were in circulation mysterious stories that everything in the administration of the lighthouse at Black Rocks was not satisfactory. There were sly whisperings that goods belonging to Government were given out to others by the keepers, but when, where, and why, nobody said. There was only the repeated story of a mysterious disappearance of Government property. Several friends of Dave tried to catch and hold these rumours. Catch them they did, but hold them they could not. They were like birds that you may think are yours, but when you turn them into a room, lo, they fly out of an open window in the opposite direction.Thomas Trafton was very indignant."Look here!" he said with a reddened face to a fisherman repeating some of these charges, "who told you that?""Almost everybody.""Name one.""Well, Timothy Waters was one.""Timothy Waters, a man that had trouble at the light! You wait before you believe the story.""But others have said the same thing.""Well, wait; I am going to track these stories to their start."Thomas Trafton imagined that he was a hunter, and like one following up the trail of an animal, he endeavoured to track these slanders back to their den. Sometimes he would follow the accusations back to Timothy Waters, and then somebody else would be found to assert them, and so the trail would start away again. Amid the multitude of tracks, but without evidence of their origin, this hunter from the Trafton family was bewildered. He mentioned the affair to Dave, feeling that here was an innocent person whom others were attacking, and yet he might be entirely ignorant of the assault."I--I--don't want to make you uneasy, but I feel friendly more than you can imagine," said Thomas, "and I thought you ought to know about the stories that are going round.""Oh, I suppose people are always talking. Life would be dreadful dull if there wasn't something to talk about; and if I save the world from dulness I may flatter myself that I am doing some good.""Oh, but it isn't just gossip.""Isn't?" replied Dave, taking a hint from ThomasTrafton's significant look more than from any language. "What is it then?""Now, I don't believe it, mind ye. I try to stop it, but it is like trying to stop a sand-piper on the beach without a gun. Running after it don't bring it.""Well, what is it? I know you wouldn't believe anything unfair, but I am bothered to know what it is.""Why--and I thought you had better know it--they say things belonging to Government are given out from the lighthouse: 'misappropriated'--I believe that is the word.""Long word! Well, who says it?" asked Dave sternly."Oh, I'm sorry to say I've heard a good many tell it who ought to know better.""It is all a lie! Misappropriation! That good man Toby Tolman--as if he would do such a thing! Why, any one with a head might know better. Toby never would do it!""Of course he wouldn't, nor you neither. That is not the p'int, but how to stop 'em?"Dave was silent. Then he broke out,--"Who has mentioned it?"Thomas mentioned the fisherman he had recently confronted and rebuked. Then he added,--"I have tried to run the story down to its hole. It don't seem to start with him, for he says somebody told him, and--""Who is that?""Timothy Waters.""Indeed!""Now, I want to know how to stop the story.""You let me think it over, Thomas. I am much obliged to you.""I am real sorry to tell you," replied Thomas, "but I thought you ought to know of it, and I'll stand by you and Toby to--the last."This conversation was only three days before Dave's visit to Pudding Point. Thomas had said if anything new turned up he would report to Dave. "Nothing," he had said to Dave during that call at the fish-house, looking significantly at him."I understand," replied Dave, "and I have nothing. All I can do is to grin and bear it."To suit the act to the sentiment, he gave a smile with compressed lips. It was a rather grim smile.Dave was thinking of the unpleasant subject continually. What added to his burden was the conviction that he did not think it would be wise to tell his principal, for he suspected--and he judged rightly--that it would do no good, that it would only grieve the light-keeper, and that this burden of grief he was not just then in a condition to easily carry."I am acting for two," he said to himself, "and that makes it all the harder. If it were just one, just myself, I could seem to tell what to do; but I think it would do an injury to the old man to tell him now; and what shall I do? I guess I must take the advice of that psalm to myself."He had in mind the close of the twenty-seventh psalm, read the night before: "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And this was Dave's comment on the verse: "I can rest on that promise. I was not aware when a man didn't know what to do, which way to turn, that this psalm could help and rest one like that."So Dave, like many pilgrims perplexed and tired, came to the shadow of the mountain-promises of God. and there comforted his soul in the assurance that God thought of him, loved him, and would strengthen him. He needed this comfort when he returned to the lighthouse, after his visit to Thomas Trafton's fish-house, and missed the keeper."I will go upstairs to find him," he said.How hard and heavy was the sound of his footsteps as he ascended the first flight of stairs leading from the kitchen! Dave went up as if he were carrying a burden. He pushed open the door at the head of the stairway and looked into the keeper's room, anxiously and yet timidly, as if desirous to find him and yet afraid."Ah, there he is," thought Dave.He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed."Is he asleep?" wondered Dave. He stepped to the bed."Yes, he must be asleep. Shall I speak to him?"He hesitated. He wanted to wake him and make sure that an ugly suspicion was without foundation.He watched the old man's breast, and saw a movement there as of a pulsation of the heart. He held his hand before the keeper's mouth."Yes, I feel his warm breath. It must be sleep, and yet--"He paused. He did not like to express in language what he could not help in thought."I will not disturb him," he finally said, "for it may be only just sleep. I will wait, any way, till after dinner."Deferring and still suspecting, he went downstairs. The kitchen had not changed, and yet it seemed a different place. The clock and the fire now made discordant noises. The sunshine that fell through the window and rested on the floor seemed not so much to bring the light as to show how empty and comfortless the place was. He felt lonelier than ever, this man that people outside suspected of theft, who was cut off from the sympathy of the man suspected with him. He was like one of the ledges in the sea, so isolated, so much by itself, upon which the waves beat without mercy, without rest. In that hour what society, sympathy, strength, he found in the psalms!--a face to smile upon him, a voice to cheer, and a hand to uplift.
XII.
ON WHICH SIDE VICTORY?
"Well, how goes the temperance fight, Dave?" asked Dick one day.
"We are pushing it. We have organized our society, and are going to hold meetings."
"The fight," as Dick called it, was conducted on the principles of peace; but if peaceable it was not sleepy. A series of meetings of various kinds had been carefully planned, and of these one was a young people's meeting. All the exercises, like speaking and singing, were to be conducted by Shipton's youth. Bart expected to have a humble part in this meeting, and say a few Scripture verses bearing on the sin of liquor-drinking. His father was at home, and Bart did wish that in some way he could be persuaded to go to this meeting. There did not seem to be much prospect of his attendance. One day he received a mortifying check to his course. Having drunk up all his money at the public-house, he was roughly turned out of doors. This time he realized the disgrace of his situation; and the next morning, to granny's astonishment, he did not visit the saloon. To her still greater surprise, he did not leave the house all day. He even sawed and cut some wood for the fire. This was deservedly ranked as a wonder in the history of the man. When Bart returned at night his father was upstairs, "lying down," granny reported.
"Ain't that queer, granny?" whispered Bart.
"I haven't known anything like it, Bartie. He's been cuttin' more wood this afternoon. P'raps he is sick."
Not sick, but mortified and penniless. To such people publicity is not attractive.
"I don't know what it is," said granny, "but Miss Perkins says she hearn there has been trouble down in the saloon."
Miss Perkins was a gossip with a news-bag that seemed to have the depth and roominess of the Atlantic.
"Awful place, ain't it, granny, where they sell rum?"
Granny turned on him--turned quickly, fiercely.
"Bartholomew!"
She rarely addressed him that way. When she did she meant something serious. Bart's timorous face shrank before her sharp, fierce gaze.
"Bartholomew, I want you to promise never to sell rum. Put your hand on this Bible!"
"Oh, I--I never will sell."
"And you won't drink it? Promise!"
"Never!"
It was like Hamilcar of Carthage taking his son Hannibal to the altar, and there making him swear eternal hatred to Rome. Then Bart went softly out of the room.
Into some refuge he desired to steal, tell God that he, Little Mew, was weak; that he wanted to be taken care of; that he did wish to get help somehow for his father--help to be better--and he wanted to remember granny. Up over the steep, narrow, worn stairway he stole into his little bedroom, that, small and humble, had yet been a precious refuge to him, and his bed had been a boat bearing him away across waters of forgetfulness of poverty and hunger to the restful isle of dreams. If he could only forget now! He could pray, and if prayer does not make forgetful it makes restful. He leaned against his bed and told all his trouble to God--told him of his desire for his father, how much he wished God would make his father a new heart; how he wanted help for himself, that he might be kind and patient. It was touching to hear his boyish outcries, as kneeling he pleaded for one so weak, so lost, as his father. Then he went downstairs again. The moment his feet were heard on the stairs, Bart's father, who had been lying in the dark on the side of the bed nearest to the wall, arose, sighed, and went down also. Bart was standing in the little entry leading to the kitchen.
"Bart--I--want to be--" The father stopped.
It was not so much anything he said, for he said nothing definite, but it was his tone that encouraged Bart, and he listened eagerly.
"I want to be a good father to you, Bart; God knows I do."
What? Bart had never heard such language before from this parent with agitated voice and frame. Bart caught instantly at a hope that had just begun to take shape. Would his father go to the temperance meeting with him?
"Father, your ship, they say, won't sail to-morrow; and if it don't, will you go to the temperance meeting with me to-morrow night?"
"Bartholomew, if my ship don't sail, then I will go with you."
He turned and went upstairs again.
"O Bart," exclaimed granny, "let us pray that God will keep the winds off shore and not let Thomas's ship get to sea!"
The next day the winds still were unfavourable, and Bart and granny looked at one another with happier faces than they had been carrying ever since Thomas Trafton's return.
"Granny, the wind is not fair yet," Bart would exclaim, after eying the vane on the nearest church steeple. Granny would then take her turn, and go out, her apron thrown over her head, and watch the vane. At last they could say, "The ship won't go to-night."
When ever before had that vane been watched to see if it indicated a wind that would keep Thomas Trafton at home?
"Hear me say my verses once more," Bart whispered to his grandmother; and assured that his contribution to the evening's exercises was in readiness, he went with his father to the temperance meeting. Bart's place was among the speakers, and they filled several pews, their bright, hopeful faces lifted above the railings of the pews like flowers above the garden-bed. Bart's father was in the rear of the church. Bart was afraid to leave him at that distant, unguarded point; but he had promised Bart faithfully to stay, and not go out. Was ever any attendant at a meeting in a more discouraged, helpless mood than Thomas Trafton? He had been thinking, somewhat as he was accustomed to think when off at sea and away from temptation, that never again would he touch liquor; but could he keep his resolution if he made one? He felt burdened with a weighty desire, burdened with a sense of shame, burdened with a conviction of weakness, burdened every way and always.
The meeting began. Mr. James Tolman conducted it, but only to call the names of those participating in it. The recitations were varied. Several had quite pretentious speeches, and others gave only a modest extract from some appeal in poetry or prose. There were those who simply had Bible verses, and in this section Bart Trafton had a place. His verses were on the sin of intemperance. When his turn was reached he came to the platform quite readily, and then turned toward the audience. He looked once, saw great, bewildering rows of faces, and all his courage left him. He could not look again at those hundreds of staring eyes. He dropped his head, blushed, and every idea he had taken with him to the platform seemed hopelessly to have left him. Like birds, those verses had flown away, and how could he possibly call them back from that sudden flight? However, he did catch one bird. He could think of one word--"Wine!" He resolved to begin with that. A decoy bird will sometimes bring a flock about it, and if he said that one word he might think of the others. "Wine--" he screamed. Then he waited for the rest of the flock. He shrieked again, "Wine!" Once more, "W-w-wine!"
People were now smiling to see that timorous, blushing, stammering lad on the platform, and some of the children broke out into an embarrassing titter. Bart, turned in helpless confusion to Mr. Tolman.
"Forgot it," he whispered,
"Say something," said Mr. Tolman, in an encouraging tone.
Something? What would it, could it be? Bart gave one timid glance at the tittering, gaping rows before him, and feeling that he must say something, gave the first words that came into his mind. Annie Fletcher had taught them to him. Bart's voice was sharp and high, and it pierced all the space between Thomas Trafton and the platform, and the father plainly heard the boy.
"'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'"
Some of the people wondered what that had to do with intemperance. Thomas Trafton did not wonder. He heard nothing else. He did not notice whether Bart stayed on the platform or left it; he did not notice who followed Bart; he heard only those verses. The pew was an old one, and when improvements had been made in the church, this pew was not touched, but, being so far away from notice, was left undisturbed in all its odd and antique furnishings. Thomas Trafton never forgot the exact place where he sat and heard through his son's voice this short gospel that came down from God's lofty throne of love. He would in later days come to this old pew and gladly occupy it and recall this night of the temperance meeting. He would hear again the invitation given in his boy's piercing voice, and again would be repeated, though not as vividly, his experience that night; for he had an experience. It seemed to him as if while sitting there burdened and weary, yet willing, longing to find relief, One came to him,--One who had in his brow the print of thorns, and in his side the mark of a spear, and in his feet the scar of driven nails. Thomas Trafton met his Saviour there, and into peace and strength came the soul of the once drunkard.
Not long after this the west wind blew, its strong wings beating fast and sweeping Thomas Trafton's vessel far away to sea. Very few knew of his surrender to God, which brought a victory over his appetite. The minister of the church, Mr. Potter, knew, and Dave Fletcher knew.
XIII.
WHAT TO DO NEXT.
When Dave Fletcher became a clerk with Mr. Tolman, he knew he was taking the place of another who might come back in three months, and back he did come.
"Sorry, David, I haven't a place for you," said Mr. Tolman.
"Well," replied Dave, "if there isn't a place here I must find one elsewhere."
But where? He knew that his father did not need him at home, as he had already made plans for all needed farm-work.
"I don't want to go home and be just a burden, hanging round," reflected Dave. "Then I must find work here."
He talked over the situation with Dick Pray.
"What would I do, Dave? Well," said Dick, putting his hands deep down in his pockets, "I should advertise and--wait."
"I mean to advertise, but I think I had better stir round also."
"Just as well to say you want something--say it loud and strong, you know--and then let others ask what is wanted."
Dick did like to sound a trumpet, giving as loud a blast as possible, and then let the world run up and see what "Lord Dick" wanted.
"Oh, I shall advertise, and stir round also, though I don't just fancy it, and I can't say what will come from it."
And what did come the first day?
Nothing.
The second day?
Nothing.
The third day?
Nothing.
"It is getting to be fearfully tiresome," said Dave the fourth day. "I have inquired in all directions, but I can't seem to hear of anything. Oh dear! I shall always know after this how to pity folks out of work. Well, I suppose I must keep at it. If I stop, I shall surely get nothing; if I keep at it, I may be successful. Here goes for Squire Sylvester, though I don't know why I should ask him."
He mounted the steps leading to the door of Squire Sylvester's office, and hesitatingly entered that impressive business sanctum. Squire Sylvester was standing at his desk biting the end of a lead-pencil, and studying the columns of figures on the paper before him.
"Squire Sylvester, do--do--you know of any vacant situation in business?" asked Dave.
The squire looked up.
"Humph! Nothing to do?"
"Can't find it, sir."
"Well, I wish I could find somebody to work for me."
"Have you anything?" asked Dave eagerly, thinking how nice it would be to occupy a desk in the squire's office and assist in the management of such business enterprises as the building of ships or the sailing of them.
"I have been trying to find somebody to cut up some wood for me and stow it away, but I can't get hold of any unoccupied talent."
Dave's countenance dropped. It went up again, though.
"It will pay a week's board, maybe," he said to himself.
"I--I'll take that job, sir. I know how to swing an axe, and I'd rather be doing that than go loafing about."
"Good! I thought there was some stuff in you worth having."
Dave disregarded this compliment, and asked, "When shall I go to work?"
"Any time. Saw is behind the chopping-block in my shed, hung on a nail, or ought to be; and axe, I guess, is keeping the company of the block."
"I will begin to-day. There will be a comfort in knowing I am doing something."
"That is a good spirit, young man; and let me assure you if you stick to that style of doing things, some day you will be able to take comfort--a lot of it."
The squire went to the window of the office when Dave had left, and watched him cross the street in the direction of the squire's home.
"I like that young chap," murmured the squire.
Dave found the house of his employer, left word at the door that he was sent to look after the wood, and went into the shed.
"Here is the chopping-block, and there is the axe, and the saw is all right. I will take my tools outdoors, where my wood is," said Dave.
It was a day in early spring. Snow still clung to the corners of gardens, and hid away under the bushes, and lay thick on the shaded side of buildings. The sun, though, was strengthening its fires every day, and had coaxed a few bluebirds to come north, and say that warm weather had surely started from its southern home, and would be here in due season, though a bit delayed, perhaps. Two hours later, Dave's axe was striking music out of the pieces of wood the saw had first played a tune on; and it is that kind of music that helps a man to feel independent and self-reliant, contented and cheerful.
"Hollo! that you?" sang out a voice. "How are you, old man?"
Dave looked up, and saw Dick Pray nodding over the fence.
"The old man has found work, you see," replied Dave.
"None of that sort for me," sang out Dick.
In about half-an-hour another voice was calling to him across the garden fence. This was not the flexible, smooth, rounded voice of youth addressing Dave, but there were the tones of an old man. There was a world of friendship, though, in this old man's salutation, "How d'ye do? how d'ye do?"
Dave turned toward it, and there was the old light-keeper, Toby Tolman.
"May I come in?" asked the light-keeper, approaching the gate.
"Oh yes, sir, do! Glad to see you."
The light-keeper came up the gravelled walk, approached the pile, and said, "How much more of a job have you got?"
"Oh, a couple of days."
"Well, then, do you want another?"
"Yes, sir. But how did you know I was here?"
"May, my granddaughter, knew, and she told me. I was at the house, you see. My job for you is to go to the lighthouse and be my assistant. She told me, and I said to myself, 'There's the man for me!'"
"You don't mean it! Why, where's Timothy Waters?"
"Got all through."
"His time up?"
"Well, he went before he wanted to. Wasn't just particular in reckoning what belonged to others."
Dave recalled at once the little affair about the two pennies.
"Who's at the light now, Mr. Tolman?"
"Oh, an old hand, who is just piecing me out at this time when I need help. He leaves day after to-morrow. Now, come! I'm up here trying to look somebody up to be my assistant. Can't bring it about at once; but if you'll go and stay a while I think you'll get the berth, and I don't know of anybody I'd like better to have."
"And I should like to come, too, and I will, just as soon as I finish this job."
"Maybe the squire would let you off now."
"I daresay."
"I'd like to take you back with me to-day."
"And I'd like to go, but I'd better finish up."
"You're right, on second thought. The squire wouldn't hesitate a moment, I venture to say; but then people sometimes grant us favours when at the same time they say to themselves, 'I wish they hadn't asked me.' You stay and finish your job."
The second day after this the task was completed, the saw going to its place on the nail behind the chopping-block, and the axe finding quarters near by.
"There!" said the squire: "I don't know that I ever paid for a job with greater satisfaction."
He was handling a roll of bills as he said this, and handed one of these to Dave.
"It is too much, sir."
"Oh no. That was a peculiar pile of wood, and it took a peculiar kind of merit to get the better of it. For ordinary wood," said the squire, his eyes blinking, "I should only pay an ordinary price; but this wood was something more than ordinary, and of course the price goes up. When I can do you a favour, you let me know."
That day toward sunset a dory was gently tossing at the foot of the lighthouse on Black Rocks.
"Hollo!" shouted Dave, looking up from the boat and aiming his voice at the door above.
"Oh, that you?" asked the light-keeper, quickly appearing in the doorway and looking down. "My man will be here in a jiffy and go home in your boat, as we fixed it, you know."
Dave exchanged the boat for the lighthouse, and the retiring assistant quit the lighthouse for the boat, then rowing to his home. Dave heard that night the wind humming about the lantern, saw the friendly rays beckoning from other lighthouses, heard the wash of the waves around the gray tower of stone, and felt that he had reached a home.
XIV.
GUESTS AT THE LIGHTHOUSE.
In a month Dave Fletcher was established at the light on Black Rocks as assistant-keeper--a position that would bring him a far handsomer salary than could any present clerkship at Shipton. This berth was not secured without a struggle by Dave's friends, as several candidates were willing to take the duties and profits of the place.
"You've got the place, though others wanted it," said the keeper, returning from town one day and wiping his round, red face with his handkerchief. "News came to-day. I don't know but you would have lost it, but they say a friend of yours interceded and told them up and down you must have it any way."
"Who was it?"
"Somebody that said he had seen you run a saw and knew you could run a lighthouse. That's what folks tell me he said."
"Oh, Squire Sylvester!"
"Yes. Queer feller; but he isn't all growl, though he does look like it, maybe."
Some time after this there were visitors at the light. One was expected, the other was not. The first was Bart Trafton, brought by the light-keeper one soft, sunny April day. Bart was very much interested in the lantern.
[image]"Bart was very much interested in the lantern of the lighthouse."Page 159
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"Bart was very much interested in the lantern of the lighthouse."Page 159
"Can I go up with you and see the lantern?" he asked.
"Oh yes," said Dave, leading Bart up the iron stairway that mounted from room to room.
"There!" said Bart, looking round on the glass windows enclosing the lantern and the lamp in its centre: "I think this is a dreadful interestin' place."
"I think so too, Bart."
"And what I think is interestin' is that lamp in the centre. Why, granny uses a lamp that, it seems to me, is no bigger than that, but it can't throw anywhere near such a light as that. I saw your light last night."
"You did? where?"
"From the hill behind our house. I went up there and saw it."
"I did not know that. Then we could signal to one another."
"Signal?"
"Yes, this way. Supposing, now, I should hang a lantern out on the side of the lighthouse toward the land, toward your home, and you could see it: you might take it as a sign that I wanted--well--we will say--a doctor."
"I think I could see it with father's spy-glass; it is real powerful. Say, will you try it to-morrow night? You hang it out, and I will take father's spy-glass and see if I can make out anything. Then I will send you word by the mail. You don't think it is too far from our house to the light?"
"Too far to see? oh no. Now, I said a man might want a doctor here. I have often thought if one of us was sick--and you know the keeper is getting old--and if the other couldn't get off to bring a doctor, it might be a very serious thing for the sick man."
"Well, if you are in trouble and will hang out a light, and I see it, I will tell the people, and they will get to you."
Dave thought no more of this, but silently said, "I wonder if I haven't something else interesting to show the boy! Yes, I have got it."
He went down from the lantern to the kitchen, and took from its shelf the strange box of sandal-wood, whose story Dave already knew.
The light-keeper now repeated to Bart the tale of the drifting relic. He held it to his ear. Did the boy think it was a shell--that it would murmur a song of wave and cloud and the broad sunshine sweeping down on lonely surf-washed ledges?
"It won't talk," said the light-keeper, beaming on him.
Bart shook his head.
"I wish it would talk," thought the keeper. "It might tell about that man whom we picked up and brought into the light, and who seemed to know something about it. I wonder if he will ever call for it!"
He spoke of it to Dave afterward. The two were up on the lantern-deck at sunset looking off upon the sea. The water was still and glassy. It was heaving gently, as if with the dying day it too was dying, but feebly pulsating with life. One vast surface of shining gray, it gradually darkened till it was a mass of shadows across which were drawn the lines of white surf cresting the ledges.
"Several vessels in the harbour," said Dave.
"Yes: they have been coming down from Shipton this afternoon; but the wind has all died away, and they seem to have made up their mind to anchor there to-night. It is getting cool. Perhaps we had better go down," said the keeper, shrugging his shoulders. While within the lantern he glanced at the lamp, and then descended to the kitchen. Without the twilight deepened. Out of the gloom towered the lighthouse, bearing aloft its guiding, warning rays. The keeper was in the kitchen, trimming an old lantern which had done him much faithful service. That small visitor, Bart, had gone with Dave up into the lantern, anxious to see the working of the lamp.
The keeper lighted his lantern, and then started for the fog-signal tower. He was descending the stairs, when he heard a cry outside of the lighthouse.
"Somebody at the foot of the ladder, I guess, wants me," concluded the keeper, "and I will go to the door and see who it is."
He went to the door, lantern in hand, and looked down.
"Hollo, there!" sang out a man from the shadows below. "Shall I come up?"
"Ay, ay!" responded the keeper. "Low water down there, isn't it, so you can come up the ladder?"
"I guess so. I will make fast and try the ladder."
The keeper heard the steps of somebody on the ladder, and then a man's form wriggled up through the hole in the platform outside the door.
"I get up with less trouble to you than I did the last time I was here," said the man.
The keeper looked at him.
"Ho! this you?" he asked.
"Nobody else."
It was the man who one day, when intoxicated, had been rescued from the bar, and the next morning had shown singular interest in the little box of sandalwood.
"Come up!" said the keeper, leading the man to the kitchen.
"I have been some time coming, haven't I?"
"Better late than never. Always glad to see people. Take that chair before the fire, and make yourself at home. I did not know as I should ever see you again. You are a Shipton man?" asked the keeper bluntly.
"Yes, I belong to Shipton; but then I am off about all the time. I think I have seen you on the street there."
"I was thinking myself I had seen you, but I couldn't say when, except that time you were at the lighthouse."
"Have you got that box now?"
"Oh yes. Here it is. Nobody has come to claim it."
He took the box down from its shelf and placed it on the table.
The keeper's companion said, "Now I will tell you the story about that box, and this letter, too, will confirm it."
As he spoke he took a letter from his pocket and opened it.
"The man who wrote that was an old shipmate, Grant Williams, a warm friend, and faithful too. He knew I had a weakness, and used to say he was afraid his shipmate would get into the breakers. He sent me a letter from a foreign port; here it is. You look at it. You will see that he gave me some good advice. He laid it all down like a chart; but I was a poor hand to steer by it. 'I expect to sail for Shipton in a Norwegian bark,' he wrote (I think he was born in Norway himself, but had been a long time in America), 'and I am going to get and bring my old shipmate a present of a box of sandal-wood, and I shall pack a few keepsakes into it. I will put my picture in, just to make it seem all the more like a present from me. I will put your initials and mine on the under side of the box. I will leave it at Shipton with your father if you are not there. And now don't forget this: it is to be a reminder of my desire that you should let liquor alone. When you see it, think of an old shipmate, and look at my face you will find in the box.' The first time I saw the box was that morning after the night you found me in a state that was no credit to the one found. I knew the ship had been wrecked, and only that, and when I saw the face of my old shipmate, and knew that he had been lost on the bar where I came pretty near losing my own life through what he warned me against, I--I--felt it. I didn't see how I could take the box until I was in a condition to give some promise, you know, that I would be a better man; and now I hope I am, God being my helper."
"Well, I think it is plain proof that you are the one whom the man Williams meant, and the owner of this box, if those are your initials on the bottom--if--"
The keeper was about to ask the man for his name, but the sound of a light step tripping downstairs arrested their conversation, and both turned toward the stairway.
It was Bart Trafton. He looked up, stopped, started forward, and exclaimed, "Why, father!"
"This you, Bart?" said Thomas Trafton. "How came you here?--My boy, Mr. Tolman. My vessel is off there in the stream, and while waiting for the wind I just rowed over."
There they stood, side by side, Bart and his father, while the keeper was rising to hand the box to Thomas Trafton. The lighthouse kitchen never presented a more interesting scene than that of the reformed sailor in the presence of his oft-abused child, taking into his hands this gift, that had survived a wrecking storm, to be not only a pledge of the friendship of the dead, but to the living a stimulus to right-doing and a warning against wrong.
Thomas Trafton rowed back to the vessel that night. Bart was carried to town the next day. Bart reached home at sundown, and first told granny about the affair of the box as far as he had been able to pick up the threads of the details and weave them into a story; then he asked, "Where is father's spy-glass?"
"Behind the clock, Bartie," said granny. "What do you want it for?"
"Just to look off," he said, seizing the glass and bearing it out-doors. Granny followed him into the yard and there halted; for Bart was going farther, already bestriding the fence.
"Where is that boy going?" wondered granny.
"Bartie!" she called aloud, "it is a-gittin' too late to see things clear."
He was now mounting a hill beyond the yard.
"Back in a moment, granny!" he shouted.
She soon saw his figure standing out, clear and distinct, against the western sky, and he was elevating the glass.
"Too soon to see anything yet," he said, when he returned.
"Where you lookin', child?"
"Off to the lighthouse."
"They haven't more than lighted her up."
"I know it. I was too early."
"You want to see the light? You won't have to take a glass for that; you just wait."
"I want to see something else. You come with me, granny, when I go again."
"Sakes, child, what you up to?"
Later two figures crept up the hill, one carrying a spy-glass.
"There, granny!" said the bearer of the glass. "Now you look off to the light at Black Rocks, and right under it see if you can't see another light--a little one."
"La, child," declared granny, vainly looking through the glass, "I can't see nothin'. This thing pokes out what there is there."
"Eh? can't you, granny?" replied Bart, levelling the glass toward the harbour. "I see the light. And--and--I think--I see a--something else underneath. Seems like a little star under a moon."
The next day this was dropped in the post-office:--
"DEAR DAVE,--I saw your lantern, I know. Did you hang it out? Your friend, BART."
Dave answered this in person within a week.
"I'm having a holiday," he said to granny--"off for a day--and thought I would call. I want you, please, to say for me to Bart I got his note, and that I did hang out my lantern the night that he looked for it."
"Now, did you ever see sich a boy? He has been up every night to look for that lantern, and he says he feels easier if he don't see it."
"You tell him not to worry. We are very comfortable. A person might live there a century and nothing happen to them."
Notwithstanding this assertion about the safety of century-serving keepers, Bart would sometimes steal out in the dark and climb the bare, lonely hill. Then he would search the black horizon.
"There's the reg'lar light," he would say, "but I don't see anything more. All right!"
XV.
THE STORM GATHERING.
There was a tongue of land not far from the lighthouse known as "Pudding Point." How long the water-trip to it might be depended upon the state of the tide. In the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse there was, in the direction of this Pudding Point, such an accumulation of sandy ridges that at low-water the voyage was only a quarter of a mile. At high tide all the yellow flats were covered, and an oarsman must pull his boat across half-a-mile of water to go from the light to the point. Sometimes Dave had occasion to visit Pudding Point. A few houses were there, and they might be able to supply an article needed at the light, and that would save a trip to Shipton. One sunny morning Dave had rowed over from the light, and was drawing his boat up the sands, when he noticed a familiar figure striding along a ridge beyond the beach. It was a person of handsome carriage, and one well aware of it.
"I should know that form anywhere," said Dave. "Hollo, Dick!" he shouted.
Dick Pray came running down a sandy slope and gave Dave his hand.
"I am trying to hunt up Thomas Trafton," said Dave. "I believe he has a fish-house around here, hasn't he?"
"You'll find him on that ledge a little way back."
Dave hunted up the fish-house--a black, weather-beaten box. Thomas Trafton was spreading fish on the long fish-flakes in the rear of his humble quarters.
"That you, Dave?" asked the fisherman. "I thought I saw you down on the shore a half-hour ago."
"I was over at the light half-an-hour ago."
"Then it was Timothy Waters."
"How so?"
"Don't you know that if one takes a back view of you and Timothy, although he is really older than you by half-a-dozen years, it wouldn't be easy to tell you apart? Let me see. You are twenty-one?"
"So they say at home."
"Timothy is twenty-seven at least.'
"And I look like Timothy?"
"Rear view only, and I can only tell it is him if in walking he throws his arms out. You never do that."
"I am not anxious to resemble Timothy Waters. I thought he was at sea."
"Off and on. He is now, I suppose, in that craft off in the stream."
"TheRelentless?"
"That's the one. I know I am glad to be out of her. My health improved steadily after quitting her. I am going to be at home, fishing, this season."
"How do they all do at home?"
"Oh, comfortable."
"Bart is getting to be a big boy, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is. He thinks a good deal of you. Now, you know that habit he got into once--"
"What was that?"
"Of taking my spy-glass and going out to look at the lighthouse at night--"
"To see if I had hung out a lantern because we were disabled--by sickness, you know, or something of the kind?"
"That is it. Well, his granny says he hasn't wholly dropped it now. She will see him go out, and when he comes back she will say, 'Anything?' 'Nothing,' he will say."
"Oh, I guess there never will be any need of his looking."
"No, I s'pose not; but it shows his interest."
"Yes; I am thankful for that.--Well, let us have a fish to broil; have come out for that."
Dave received his fish, paid for it, and very soon turned away, striding off energetically in the direction of his boat.
When Dave returned to the lighthouse, the tide, gradually dropping, had uncovered the rocky foundations, and the water was playing with the fringes of seaweed all about the rocks.
"How gracefully that seaweed rises and falls! Those curves of its motion are very delicate.--Hollo! what is that?" he asked.
Looking at the foundations, he saw in a crevice a little object that was not a lump of rock-weed or a rock, and what was it?
"A pocket-book!" said Dave, leaning out of his boat and picking up this relic tightly wedged between the stones. "I'll look at that when I get up into the kitchen."
Reaching the kitchen, he hastily opened the pocket-book, noticed that it was empty, and then placed it to dry on a shelf. It was very peaceful in the kitchen, and the stove purred and the clock ticked contentedly and quietly as ever. But where was the light-keeper? his assistant wondered.
"Upstairs probably," was the thought in reply; and yet this consideration, reasonable as it might seem at the moment, did not dispose of the question wholly. True, in a lighthouse, where one might say if a man were not downstairs he must be upstairs, that he could not be "out in the yard" or "in the cellar," Dave's conclusion seemed to be correct. He felt, however, a peculiar sense of loneliness. If Dave were a person given to moods, if he were likely to be sombre, he might have said it was only a fancy; but for one of his temperament that was unusual. Dave with reason had been somewhat worried about his principal. Toby Tolman was growing old. It had been in certain quarters openly said that he was too old for his position. He had been such an efficient keeper, and he had as his assistant a man so valuable, that no one cared to make an effort to remove him from his position. The person who would probably be benefited by any change, and would be invited to take charge of the light, was David Fletcher, and he would not move, for that reason, against his kind old friend. Dave had worked all the harder to fill up any deficiencies on the part of his principal, and the principal would doubtless have been invited to step out if his assistant had not worked so hard to keep him in. Often Dave noticed an indisposition in the light-keeper to attend to that fraction of the duties of the place falling to him, and Dave rightly attributed the indisposition to inability. During the watch-hours belonging to the keeper his assistant had sometimes found him asleep, and when the rest-hours belonging to the keeper arrived, he would unduly prolong his sleep in the morning, and neglect duties to which he had hitherto given prompt attention. Dave also noticed that Mr. Tolman lingered at an unusual length over his Bible. It would be an exceedingly good sign if it could be said of many people that they spent twice as much time as previously with their Bibles; but when a man usually giving to this habit an hour and a half may take three hours, neglecting other daily duties, there may be occasion for inquiry into the change. The light-keeper did not himself notice this peculiarity about to be mentioned, and yet any one seeing the passages read would have appreciated it. The keeper now found unusual comfort in the psalms that spoke of God as a hiding-place, a refuge, a high tower. Was he like the mariner who sees the storm pressing him closely and hastens to find the harbour where he can let fall each straining sail, like the tired bird that drops its wings because it has found its nest?
Dave had other reason for worry. There were in circulation mysterious stories that everything in the administration of the lighthouse at Black Rocks was not satisfactory. There were sly whisperings that goods belonging to Government were given out to others by the keepers, but when, where, and why, nobody said. There was only the repeated story of a mysterious disappearance of Government property. Several friends of Dave tried to catch and hold these rumours. Catch them they did, but hold them they could not. They were like birds that you may think are yours, but when you turn them into a room, lo, they fly out of an open window in the opposite direction.
Thomas Trafton was very indignant.
"Look here!" he said with a reddened face to a fisherman repeating some of these charges, "who told you that?"
"Almost everybody."
"Name one."
"Well, Timothy Waters was one."
"Timothy Waters, a man that had trouble at the light! You wait before you believe the story."
"But others have said the same thing."
"Well, wait; I am going to track these stories to their start."
Thomas Trafton imagined that he was a hunter, and like one following up the trail of an animal, he endeavoured to track these slanders back to their den. Sometimes he would follow the accusations back to Timothy Waters, and then somebody else would be found to assert them, and so the trail would start away again. Amid the multitude of tracks, but without evidence of their origin, this hunter from the Trafton family was bewildered. He mentioned the affair to Dave, feeling that here was an innocent person whom others were attacking, and yet he might be entirely ignorant of the assault.
"I--I--don't want to make you uneasy, but I feel friendly more than you can imagine," said Thomas, "and I thought you ought to know about the stories that are going round."
"Oh, I suppose people are always talking. Life would be dreadful dull if there wasn't something to talk about; and if I save the world from dulness I may flatter myself that I am doing some good."
"Oh, but it isn't just gossip."
"Isn't?" replied Dave, taking a hint from Thomas
Trafton's significant look more than from any language. "What is it then?"
"Now, I don't believe it, mind ye. I try to stop it, but it is like trying to stop a sand-piper on the beach without a gun. Running after it don't bring it."
"Well, what is it? I know you wouldn't believe anything unfair, but I am bothered to know what it is."
"Why--and I thought you had better know it--they say things belonging to Government are given out from the lighthouse: 'misappropriated'--I believe that is the word."
"Long word! Well, who says it?" asked Dave sternly.
"Oh, I'm sorry to say I've heard a good many tell it who ought to know better."
"It is all a lie! Misappropriation! That good man Toby Tolman--as if he would do such a thing! Why, any one with a head might know better. Toby never would do it!"
"Of course he wouldn't, nor you neither. That is not the p'int, but how to stop 'em?"
Dave was silent. Then he broke out,--
"Who has mentioned it?"
Thomas mentioned the fisherman he had recently confronted and rebuked. Then he added,--
"I have tried to run the story down to its hole. It don't seem to start with him, for he says somebody told him, and--"
"Who is that?"
"Timothy Waters."
"Indeed!"
"Now, I want to know how to stop the story."
"You let me think it over, Thomas. I am much obliged to you."
"I am real sorry to tell you," replied Thomas, "but I thought you ought to know of it, and I'll stand by you and Toby to--the last."
This conversation was only three days before Dave's visit to Pudding Point. Thomas had said if anything new turned up he would report to Dave. "Nothing," he had said to Dave during that call at the fish-house, looking significantly at him.
"I understand," replied Dave, "and I have nothing. All I can do is to grin and bear it."
To suit the act to the sentiment, he gave a smile with compressed lips. It was a rather grim smile.
Dave was thinking of the unpleasant subject continually. What added to his burden was the conviction that he did not think it would be wise to tell his principal, for he suspected--and he judged rightly--that it would do no good, that it would only grieve the light-keeper, and that this burden of grief he was not just then in a condition to easily carry.
"I am acting for two," he said to himself, "and that makes it all the harder. If it were just one, just myself, I could seem to tell what to do; but I think it would do an injury to the old man to tell him now; and what shall I do? I guess I must take the advice of that psalm to myself."
He had in mind the close of the twenty-seventh psalm, read the night before: "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And this was Dave's comment on the verse: "I can rest on that promise. I was not aware when a man didn't know what to do, which way to turn, that this psalm could help and rest one like that."
So Dave, like many pilgrims perplexed and tired, came to the shadow of the mountain-promises of God. and there comforted his soul in the assurance that God thought of him, loved him, and would strengthen him. He needed this comfort when he returned to the lighthouse, after his visit to Thomas Trafton's fish-house, and missed the keeper.
"I will go upstairs to find him," he said.
How hard and heavy was the sound of his footsteps as he ascended the first flight of stairs leading from the kitchen! Dave went up as if he were carrying a burden. He pushed open the door at the head of the stairway and looked into the keeper's room, anxiously and yet timidly, as if desirous to find him and yet afraid.
"Ah, there he is," thought Dave.
He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed.
"Is he asleep?" wondered Dave. He stepped to the bed.
"Yes, he must be asleep. Shall I speak to him?"
He hesitated. He wanted to wake him and make sure that an ugly suspicion was without foundation.
He watched the old man's breast, and saw a movement there as of a pulsation of the heart. He held his hand before the keeper's mouth.
"Yes, I feel his warm breath. It must be sleep, and yet--"
He paused. He did not like to express in language what he could not help in thought.
"I will not disturb him," he finally said, "for it may be only just sleep. I will wait, any way, till after dinner."
Deferring and still suspecting, he went downstairs. The kitchen had not changed, and yet it seemed a different place. The clock and the fire now made discordant noises. The sunshine that fell through the window and rested on the floor seemed not so much to bring the light as to show how empty and comfortless the place was. He felt lonelier than ever, this man that people outside suspected of theft, who was cut off from the sympathy of the man suspected with him. He was like one of the ledges in the sea, so isolated, so much by itself, upon which the waves beat without mercy, without rest. In that hour what society, sympathy, strength, he found in the psalms!--a face to smile upon him, a voice to cheer, and a hand to uplift.