Part 10

There came to him again the words of the psalmist, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."

He could rest on that promise. He was beginning to find out what God could be in the time of trouble. Friends might fail him; on every side there might be an emptiness, a loneliness. All about him settled the presence of God, filling up this solitude, this waste, this night. He could lean on God and--wait. Others might suspect his integrity. He knew he was not guilty, and he welcomed the thought of God's knowledge--that God saw to the bottom of his heart, and into the depths of his life, and God knew he was innocent. Yes, he could wait.

That evening Thomas Trafton, his old mother, and Bart sat around the little table of pine on which the kitchen lamp had been placed. The father was telling where he had been that day and whom he had seen.

"Dave Fletcher was down at the fish-house to-day. He spoke, Bart, of your looking through the spy-glass, but he did not think it necessary."

"Did he speak of it?" said Bart eagerly. "I have a great mind to--"

"To go out?" asked his father--"to go out and see? Oh, nonsense! No more need of it than my going to Australia."

"Oh, let him go if he wants to," pleaded the grandmother; and the father assented.

Bart reached up to the spy-glass resting on a shelf, took it down, and seizing his hat also, hurried outdoors. He was going through the yard, when he saw somebody stealing away from a shed in the rear of the house.

"Why, if that don't look like Dave Fletcher himself!" thought Bart. "Dave Fletcher!" he shouted.

Whoever it was--and the form certainly did resemble Dave's--he made no reply, but hurried through the yard down into the street.

"Somebody else, I suppose!" murmured Bart. "Wonder what he wanted! Perhaps it was one of the fishermen who wanted to leave something for father. Can't stop to see now."

He hurried to the top of the hill, raised his glass, and pointed it toward the lighthouse.

"Father!" he said, appearing the next minute in the kitchen, and speaking hurriedly, "oh--oh--come here! and you--granny--and see if--"

He said no more, for this was sufficient to startle his auditors, and all three hastened up the hill.

"You didn't see a second light at the lighthouse?" asked the father.

"Yes, I did," replied Bart; "I know I did."

"Guess you were mistaken," suggested granny.

"No, I wasn't; you just look and see your--yourself."

Granny could not see anything except a hazy glow where the lighthouse might be supposed to stand.

"Can't say I saw even that as well as I wanted to," she confessed to herself.

Thomas Trafton's keen eyes, though, detected a bright little star under the light in the lantern of the sea-tower, and exclaimed, "No doubt about it! Afraid there's trouble there, and--"

"Could take our boat, father," said Bart eagerly, who had been already planning for this emergency, "and pick up a doctor; for that is what the signal must mean after what Dave told me, you know, and--and--"

"We will go right off," said Thomas Trafton, in his quick, decided way.

As they were rowing across the river to obtain the services of Dr. Peters, Bart thought of the time, half-a-dozen years ago, when his quest for the physician ended in a river-bath.

"Dave Fletcher did a good thing for me then," thought Bart, "and I will stand by him now."

How he bent to his oars and made them bend in their turn! It was a pleasure to be of some use in the world.

It was that evening that the light-keeper came back for a moment to consciousness, and looking steadily at Dave, said in a very serious tone of voice, "How long have I been lying here?"

"Oh, only since morning," replied his nurse, delighted to hear his voice. "Now, you be quiet and tell me if you want anything--any medicine you take when you are sick this way."

Here the keeper's thoughts wandered again. He talked about the fog that was coming, and a craft that was caught on the bar, and then, looking at Dave steadily, said in a hesitating way, "Hadn't you better--put it--back--Dave?"

"Put back what, sir?"

"What you--took? Let me--as a--friend--advise you."

"Took?"

The keeper lifted himself on his elbow and looked all around, as if trying to find something.

"David, don't hide it!"

Then the keeper fell back upon his bed, and murmuring a few words indistinctly, he was lost again in a stupor. He was no sooner quiet than his assistant's quick ear caught the sound of steps and voices down in the signal-tower; for all the doors this summer evening were open between the keeper's room and the platform at the entrance of the lighthouse. It was the arrival of Thomas Trafton's party, and Dr. Peters was a member of it. If Dave felt that its coming was like the reaching out of a hand that lifted him up and strengthened him, the words of the keeper were like a hand smiting him down.

What did Toby Tolman mean?

XVII.

_THOMAS TRAFTON, DETECTIVE._

"Well!" said Dr. Peters, after a night of careful watching of the light-keeper's symptoms. He was a tall, elderly gentleman, with a very smooth, melodious voice, its tones seeming to have been dipped in syrup.

He began again,--

"Well, Mr. Fletcher, I think Mr. Tolman will recover from this. We shall get him through." And when he spoke, Dr. Peters waved his hands as if he had already disposed of this case and now passed it out of sight.

"However, Mr. Fletcher, the case will need careful watching, and you had better take charge of it, unless his daughter might come down to relieve you."

"Possibly his granddaughter," thought Dave.

"I don't think we can ever rely on Toby Tolman's resuming his old duties here--might do a little something, you know--and you had better get Thomas Trafton or some trusty man to help you. When will the inspector be here?"

"Our lighthouse inspector, Captain Sinclair, doctor?"

"Yes."

"In about a fortnight, perhaps sooner. The steamer that brings supplies for the lighthouse will soon be here, and Captain Sinclair will come in her, I think."

"The inspector, to look after matters?"

"Yes, sir. Of course I shall report what you say about the keeper to headquarters at once."

"I would. It is very important. And when Captain Sinclair comes, let me know, please."

"I will, sir."

"Of course it is necessary that things should be inspected. I am glad he is coming. Well to be careful."

"What does he mean?" wondered Dave. "Has he got hold of those stories about misappropriation? Well, when Captain Sinclair comes I hope he will sift things to the bottom. I am not afraid of an investigation."

Dave took satisfaction in the consciousness of his integrity; still it was not pleasant to be suspected. It was Toby Tolman's mysterious language, indicating that he too held Dave in some kind of suspicion, which troubled Dave painfully. The day after Dr. Peters's visit the light-keeper again referred to this mystery. He roused himself into a state of seeming consciousness, and then relapsed. Again he awoke. He looked around him and fastened his eyes on the top of a clothes-press in the room.

"What do you want, sir? Anything there that you want to put on?" asked Dave.

The keeper shook his head. Pointing at the top of the press, he said, "Dave, I would put it back."

"What do you mean? I don't understand you."

The keeper, though, was gone again, murmuring about the tide, which he said was very late, and when would it come in? He had been awake long enough to cruelly wound Dave once more.

Bart Trafton had gone home with Dr. Peters, rowing him to town in the same dory that brought him to the light the night before. In two days Bart was down again. As he sat in the kitchen eating some apple-pie offered him by his father, he said, "Father, I found something in our shed."

"What was it, Bart?"

Laying down his lunch, Bart drew out of a package a chronometer.

"Found that in the shed?" asked the surprised father.

"Yes, on a shelf."

"Why, Bart, this has got the letters of our lighthouse on it. Must have come from here. And in our shed! How did it get there? I must show this to Dave," said Thomas Trafton.

"Hush-sh!" exclaimed Dave, when his assistant entered the room; "Toby is trying to get some sleep."

"See here!" said Thomas, in low tones. "Must show you something."

"I never saw it before," replied Dave, handling the chronometer. "It belongs here, though. There are the initials. Where did you get it?"

A stir among the bedclothes arrested the attention of the two men. Toby Tolman had opened his eyes, and was looking at them. Something he saw must have pleased him, for he smiled.

"That is right, Dave. I am glad you brought it back. I would put it up."

"Where?" asked the astonished Dave, anxious to lay hold of any clue to a serious mystery.

"Up there."

He pointed at the top of the clothes-press. The press was not a tall one. Dave standing on tiptoe could reach to its top, and he now laid the watch there.

"Is that right?" asked Dave.

The keeper nodded his head, and then closed his eyes, his face wearing a satisfied expression foreign to it all through his sickness.

"Is not that queer?" whispered Dave. "Some mystery that is too deep for me."

He beckoned Thomas and Bart out of the room, and then followed them downstairs.

"Now, how do you explain that?" asked Dave, as the three clustered about the stove, whose heat that day was acceptable, for the air was chilly and the wind was a prophet of storm.

"Don't know," said Thomas.

"I'd give this old pocket-book full of silver," declared Dave, "to have that thing cleared up. It takes a load off my mind, I tell you. The old man has been harping on the fact that I took something, and he has been looking toward that old clothes-press in such a strange way. I didn't know anything was up there. Did you see how he acted, smiled about it?"

"Where did you get this pocket-book?" asked Thomas.

"The day that Toby was taken sick I picked it up among the rocks here. I had been over at your fish-house, and found it when I was coming back. Been in the water, you see."

"Here are some letters on it--T.W."

"That means Tobias Winkley or--"

"Thomas Winkley. Can't prove it to be Thomas Trafton; and if you could no money is in it. 'T.W.,' that is Timothy Watson."

"Or Timothy Waters."

"Yes; Timothy Waters, or anything that would go with those initials. Toby Tolman wouldn't go."

"Now I must go upstairs again to be with my patient."

Dave Fletcher's heart was lighter as he went upstairs again, but the burden now lightening on his shoulders seemed to be transferred to those of Thomas Trafton.

"Don't understand this!" he exclaimed. "Where is Bart? Bart!"

There was no response to this call, and the father went downstairs into the storeroom to hunt up Bart.

"Nobody here. I'll go into the signal-tower," said Thomas; and up in the engine-room, looking soberly out of a window fronting the breakers on the bar, stood Bart.

"You here, Bart? What are you doing here?"

"Thinking," said the boy gloomily.

"What makes you so sober, Bart?"

"Don't like to have folks suspected."

"Neither do I. That old thing was found in our shed, but I don't know anything about it."

It relieved Bart to hear his father's stout assertion of innocence, but his burdens had not all dropped.

"You know they talk about Dave, father."

"Well, you don't believe it?"

How could Bart consent to take Dave Fletcher down from that high pedestal to which he had elevated him? How could he believe that his marble statue was after all only common clay, and even of an inferior earth?

"I won't believe it till it is proved," said Bart stoutly, "nor of you either, father."

This relieved Thomas Trafton.

"Bart, you see if I don't turn this rascally thing over and get at the truth! I'll find the mischief-maker; yes, I will."

Thomas Trafton was by nature a detective. He put himself on the trail of this mystery, and if a trained hound he could not have followed the track more keenly and resolutely. He announced his purpose to Dave, and the latter would ask him occasionally if he had any clue.

"I am at work on it, still running. The scent is good, and I have something of a trail. I'll tell you when I get through," was one reply he made.

XVIII.

_INTO A TRAP._

"Cap'n Sinclair!" called out a voice. The man projecting the voice stood up in a boat rocking gently in the harbour. The man addressed stood in a small black steamer, the _Spitfire_, employed in conveying supplies to the lighthouses. He leaned over the steamer's rail and asked, "What is it?"

"I suppose you remember me, Timothy Waters?"

"Oh, that you, Waters?"

"Yes. Could I see you?"

"Here I am."

Captain Sinclair was a middle-aged man, rather stout, wearing a moustache, and flashing a friendly look out of his brown eyes.

"I don't think I was fairly treated," said Timothy, "when I lost my place in the lighthouse, and I wanted to make some explanations. Besides me, you may have heard the stories all round about the goods they are wasting at the light?"

"Well, I have heard something," said the captain impatiently. "Somebody wrote to me about it, but he wasn't man enough to sign his name. May have been a woman, for all I know."

"If you'd let me come aboard--"

"Oh, you can come aboard; but I won't be here long. I must go into the light, and the steamer is going off--at once. Just row over to the lighthouse, and I'll talk with you there."

Timothy turned away and shrugged his shoulders. He said to himself, "I don't want to go in there. However, I think I saw Trafton and that Fletcher rowin' off. I can stand the old man." He turned to the captain and said in a fawning tone, "All right, cap'n. I want you to have your say about it."

When Captain Sinclair and Timothy entered the kitchen of the lighthouse, to the surprise of Timothy he saw Trafton and Dave Fletcher. They had "rowed off," and had also rowed back. Timothy was so unprepared for their appearance that he would have allowed the opportunity for presenting his cause to slip by unimproved. Dave Fletcher, though, was ready to begin at once, and did so.

"Captain Sinclair, be seated, please, and the rest of you. When you were here yesterday I called your attention to certain charges made against Mr. Tolman and myself that--"

"Oh yes, I remember; and here is a letter full of them somebody sent to me, but they were too cowardly to add any name. Let me have the light-book. That will give me some of last year's records."

Timothy was looking on in apparent unconcern, but really in bewilderment, and wondering when his turn would come. He began to address the inspector.

"Cap'n--"

Thomas was ahead of him, and by this time had said three words to Timothy's one,--

"Cap'n Sinclair, I--Cap'n Sinclair, I have something to say. I think the author of all this trouble is here. He"--pointing a finger at Timothy--"came to this lighthouse, took a chronometer, carried it to Shipton, left it in my shed--"

This torrent of charges, so unexpected, swept away the statements Timothy had prepared for Captain Sinclair. He attempted to stem the torrent, and cried, "It is easy to say you know, cap'n"--Timothy tried to be very bland, restraining his temper--"easy to say you know--"

"I can say that he came to this lighthouse," Thomas broke out again, "and when the keeper was lyin' sick on his bed--asleep, as he thought, is my guess--he took a chronometer--"

Timothy, who had been curbing his temper, now threw away all reins.

"Where is the keeper?" he asked stormily. "I don't believe he can say that."

"Oh, he is upstairs, and well enough to see us. The doctor says he is doing well. And walk up, gentlemen," said Dave, "walk up!"

Bart was reading to the old man, who was seated in a rocking-chair near his bed. The company almost filled the little room, but the light-keeper bade them welcome.

"Mr. Tolman," said Thomas, "won't you tell Cap'n Sinclair what you told me about the taking of the chronometer?"

"Oh yes," said the old light-keeper slowly. "I was feeling very sick, so much so that I concluded to lie down. I s'pose I was lying with my eyes 'most shut, when I heard a step and saw a man come in, and he looked at me, and then he stood on a chair, examined the top of that clothes-press, and took down a chronometer--an old thing, but it might be fixed up. The man thought I was asleep, and I didn't see his face, only it seemed to me as if he had whiskers, and when he stood on a chair to reach the chronometer he looked--standing with his back to me---as if it was Dave Fletcher. Well, I was that weak I couldn't speak, and my visitor went off, supposing, I daresay, that I was asleep. Well, I kept it on my mind, forgetting the whiskers, that it was Dave, and I charged him with it. Sorry I did--"

"Well," said Timothy fiercely, "why wasn't it Fletcher? It is about time that innocent chap should do something."

"He says--Mr. Tolman says," observed Captain Sinclair, "that you and Fletcher look alike."

"Wall," bawled Timothy, "why couldn't it have been Fletcher much as me, don't you see? Come you--you feller--you stand by this clothes-press and reach up, and let's see how you look."

"This 'feller' is ready," said Dave, going to the clothes-press and reaching to its top.

"And here I am. Why ain't it him?" asked Timothy, also standing by the press and reaching up.

"They do look alike when their backs are turned toward us," observed Captain Sinclair.

"Only the keeper said the one he saw had whiskers, and there are Timothy's," remarked Thomas.

Dave wore only a moustache. Thomas's remark called the attention of everybody to Timothy's whiskers, projecting like wings from his cheeks. These wings were red, but their colour was not as vivid as that of Timothy's face.

"Besides," continued Thomas, "Dave wasn't here. He can prove an alibi. He was over at Pudding P'int; came to get a fish from me."

"Why," said Timothy indignantly, "I was--two miles away."

"I saw you round the shore myself; and here is your pocket-book that Dave found at the foot of the light-tower that very morning."

Timothy opened his eyes, swelled up his cheeks, puffed, declared he didn't see how that was, "and--and--"

Here Bart interrupted his stammering, and said,--

"And I saw you up at our shed that evening. I thought it was Dave Fletcher, taking a back view; but when I called 'Dave!' there was no answer to it;--and, Dave, you'd speak if I called, wouldn't you?"

"I think I would."

"This other person that looked like you didn't say a word."

Timothy puffed and protested and denied, growing redder and redder.

"See here, Waters," said Captain Sinclair: "I have been looking at the lighthouse records last year, and I have hunted up places where you have written, and the style is like this in the letter I received--that anonymous one--about the charges against the keepers in the lighthouse. You come up into the room above with me."

Stuttering in his confusion, still asserting his innocence, blushing, he stumbled up the stairway, and then alone with Captain Sinclair he was urged to make a clean breast of it.

"Yes," said the captain, "tell the whole story; for there is enough against you to shut you up in quarters of stone, and it won't be a lighthouse."

Timothy was startled by this. He broke down, and made a full confession to the inspector.

XIX.

_A PLACE TO STOP._

Here is a place to bring into a harbour our story drifting on like a boat. Dave Fletcher was appointed keeper of the light at Black Rocks, and Thomas Trafton became his assistant. Bart, though, said he considered himself to be second assistant, and should fit himself as rapidly as possible for a keeper. He wanted, he added, to be as useful as he could be--an idea that never forsook him since the old days of his career as Little Mew. Dick Pray went on in the old style, full of plans and projects, stirred by an intense ambition to do some big thing, but impatient of the little things necessary to the execution of the whole. Always ready to dare, he was as uniformly averse to the doing of the hard work that might be demanded.

Toby Tolman took up his quarters in his old home ashore. As he could not go where Dave was, he said he thought Dave ought to come to him as often as possible. Dave promised to do all in his power, and as a pledge of his sincerity he married the light-keeper's granddaughter, black-eyed, bright-eyed May Tolman. She lived under Toby Tolman's roof; and as Dave improved every opportunity to visit the grand-daughter, he was able to fulfil his promise made to the grandfather.

THE END.

----

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