CHAPTER XXIV

UNDERSTANDING

It is admitted that those eggs saved Tobias Bassett from feeling the full weight of the young woman's wrath. And that is as well. For the eggs were by this time absolutely useless for any other purpose. One cannot poach eggs for twenty minutes and pronounce them edible.

"And this toast! What a black mess!" scolded Lorna. "The tea must have been boiling half an hour, too. Tobias Bassett, would you serve such a meal as that to your poor, sick sister?"

"Oh, sugar! I tell you I ain't no fancy cook, Lorny. I--I guess I'll go up and fill the lamp. Zeke ain't going to be with us to-day. My, my! hear that wind, will ye?"

He was glad to get out of the kitchen. That young woman, he opined, was some spitfire! But he chuckled hugely as he clumped up the stairs.

"I dunno whether my matchmaking is so tarnal bad, after all," he reflected. "She was scare't Ralph was in trouble because she does care for him--just as sure as aigs is aigs."

Perhaps, too, it was better for Lorna that she had to give her attention just then to the preparation of a more dainty repast for the invalid than Tobias could have furnished.

"Poor Miss Heppy!" she sighed.

Her thoughts reverted again to Ralph. So, he was not poor. He did not deserve the pity she had been wasting on him. Or was it wasted?

The fact that he had possibly not even the reason of poverty for entering into that scheme to rob the Clinkerport Bank did not, after all, clear him of suspicion. Lorna could not--as Tobias Bassett did--flout the evidence of the address book and the penknife. The atmosphere was not immediately cleared of doubt.

The young woman did not know much about judicial procedure or the laws governing circumstantial evidence; but she was quite sure that Ralph Endicott would have to explain away the discoveries at the bank that pointed so directly to his participation in the burglary.

And the curious thing he had done in leaving town! How explain that mystery?

He had evidently shipped his trunk and taken the train himself for New Bedford; yet he had returned to Clinkerport during the evening. At daybreak he was walking the railroad track at Peehawket Cove. How had he got there from Clinkerport?

His putting to sea with the avowed intention of hailing the banker _Nelly G._ capped the mystery. Why had he not gone on with his baggage to New Bedford and boarded the fishing schooner there?

"And why? And why? And why?" murmured Lorna at length. "I might ask myself these questions from now till doomsday and be none the wiser."

She shook her head sadly as she prepared Miss Heppy's tray. These puzzling queries were not all--nor the greatest--that troubled Lorna Nicholet.

The young woman confessed in secret that more than curiosity inspired her interest in Ralph's association with Cora Devine. Why should her name and address have been in his notebook if he had not a close acquaintance with her?

From the very first time she had heard of the girl (and Conny Degger had mentioned her slurringly in connection with Ralph's name more than a year before) Lorna had felt secret jealousy. But never until now would she acknowledge it.

This phase of the mystery angered her. It was that which had caused her more than anything else to doubt Ralph's honesty and good intentions. So she still wondered if he were not really in trouble through the Devine girl and if this fact were not behind his strange actions in leaving home. Even if he had no part in the bank burglary (and of course he had not) Lorna could not absolve him of possible disgrace.

In addition, Ralph might be out on the open sea in this gale. Whether he had stuck to the leaky catboat during the night or had managed to board the _Nelly G._, Lorna feared for his safety. She hoped, however, that he had given up that wild attempt to go to the banks with the fishing craft and had made safe harbor before the hurricane had risen to its present height.

The staunch tower of the Twin Rocks Light fairly quivered in the blast. Lorna could feel the vibration of the spiral stairway as she mounted to Miss Heppy's bedroom.

"What a dreadful storm! What a dreadful storm!" the lightkeeper's sister moaned when Lorna came into the room. "Dear-oh-dear! Everything seems to come on us to once't. Feel this old stone tomb a-tremble, Lorna! When there's a storm like this I always do dread trouble. And we've all got trouble enough now, I do allow."

"But, Miss Heppy, it may not be as bad as you think," said the young woman, trying to speak cheerfully.

"For love's sake!" was the rather tart rejoinder. "I've give up all hope of ever getting our money back. I guess Arad Thompson ain't responsible for burglaries. And I should think you'd be pretty well worrited yourself, Lorna, over Ralph Endicott."

"Oh!" gasped the girl in surprise.

"Yes. Tobias was in here this morning and told me what Zeke said. Ralph--the foolish boy!--has gone to sea. And in such weather! Oh, my dear, I long since told you why I'd never marry one o' these here longshoremen. 'Them that go down to the sea in ships,' the Bible calls 'em. Many of 'em go down _under_ the sea in ships--ah, yes!

"Lorna, you are right to give up Ralph Endicott. Tobias says you ain't. He 'pears to think you two was made for each other. But if Ralph is so determined about seagoing I don't wonder that you give him over."

"But, Miss Heppy!" cried Lorna, "I am not at all sure Ralph cares particularly for me. I--I think he is all over that."

Miss Heppy, sitting up in bed with her nightcap awry, stopped sipping her tea for a moment to look over the cup at the younger woman.

"Be you blind, Lorna Nicholet?" she asked.

"Why, of course not!"

"You must be if you can't see that that boy is crazy about you. He goes mooning around here like a stray pup. I never did see anybody take it so hard as he does."

"Take what so hard?" demanded Lorna, with some exasperation.

"Your turning of him down the way you have," rejoined Miss Heppy more briskly. "Now, don't say you can't see it. Ralph Endicott isn't one that gets over a hurt easy. His feelin's air deep. Your running about with Mr. Degger just about finished Ralph."

"Why, Miss Heppy!" complained Lorna, "you are very much mistaken. He doesn't care anything about me at all. I know how he acts, I hope, when we are alone together----"

"You give him his orders long ago, didn't you?" said the shrewd old woman. "I heard you. Right here in this lighthouse."

"Oh! You mean that night we got stuck in the snowdrift?" The young woman flushed more deeply. "But I was angry. We were both angry."

"Uh-huh!" rejoined her friend.

"And I told you long ago that I would not allow the family to force me into a marriage that I did not want and with a man of whom my heart did not approve."

"I know--I know, my dear," said the old woman, nodding. "And I am not blaming you. Besides, I do think Mr. Degger is an awful friendly young man."

Lorna winced at this. Her head was turned so that Miss Heppy could not see her face.

"Somehow, Tobias don't seem to like Mr. Degger," went on the lightkeeper's sister. "But I never did think all the wisdom in the world was lodged under Tobias's sou'wester. No, indeed! You have a perfect right to say no to Ralph. But that don't keep me from being sorry for him, just the same."

"I am quite sure you are mistaken, dear Miss Heppy," Lorna rejoined seriously. "I mean about Ralph's caring anything for me--in that way. Of course we are friends. I--I should feel very bad if I thought he was in danger."

"And he certainly is, my child, if he is out in this gale," groaned Miss Heppy in her most lachrymose manner. "Ain't a mite o' doubt of that."

Lorna carried away the tray, urging the old woman to remain in bed for the day. Even if Miss Heppy's illness was mostly of the mind, resting in bed would do her more good than any medicine. But Lorna was glad to have the work of clearing up the house on her hands. Bodily exercise eased _her_ mind.

Tobias Bassett kept strictly away from the living rooms for most of the forenoon. He knew himself to be in bad odor with the black-eyed girl, who, swathed in one of Miss Heppy's voluminous aprons, briskly went about the homely tasks.

Tobias came down about noon for some tools. He no longer looked sheepish, nor did he grin when he beheld Lorna's very serious face.

"I give it as my opinion that this is the worst summer storm we ever had," the lightkeeper said. "I'm a-getting anxious, I am."

"Is there anything in sight, Tobias?" she asked him fearfully.

"Meaning any sail? I should hope not! I don't want to see no craft inshore with the wind in this quarter--nossir! I'm in trouble 'nough, as it is. I never see the beat on it. Just when Zeke is away, too."

"What has happened?" she asked.

"I'm 'fraid one o' the plates o' glass up there will blow in. The copper flange holding it is weakened--I dunno but it's giving way. Why! if that should happen we couldn't mebbe light the lamp to-night. She'd blow out or explode."

"Oh, Tobias!"

"I've got to try to fix it," he said, finding the hammer and cold chisel in the cupboard. "But it ain't no one-man job."

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Wal, ye might. If Heppy was only up and about she'd give me a hand."

"I can help you just as well as Miss Heppy," Lorna declared with confidence.

She followed the old man up the spiral stairway with lighter tread. The higher they went the louder in Lorna's ears sounded the paean of the gale. The tower trembled through all its height. The thunder of the breakers down below was, too, a threatening sound.

They reached the lamp room. The wind seemed to burst against the glassed front of the room. There was such a creaking and rattling of joints and of window frames that Lorna was actually frightened. She cowered for a moment at the back of the room, her hands over her eyes. If Ralph was out in this awful storm!

"Here ye be, Lorny!" shouted the lightkeeper. "See if you can give me a hand."

She ventured forward. At first she scarcely dared look out across the sea. The spectacle of lowering masses of cloud with the white scud flying beneath and the foaming billows racing landward shook the girl's very soul. The drum-beat of the breakers at the foot of the tower seemed to menace it.

"Oh! aren't we in danger up here?" she cried.

"I cal'late the old Light will stand some pounding yet," Tobias grimly replied.

She read the words on his lips rather than heard them. She dragged her attention from the view without to the work of repair that Tobias was engaged in. The pressure of her hand above and below the point on the broad flange where he was tapping was just the aid needed.

"That's it, Lorny. You're as good at a pinch as ary boy. If we can keep this sheet of glass from shaking out of the frame----"

"Oh, Tobias!" she gasped, "it is dreadful! I never imagined the power of the wind was so great."

"I cal'late this is some gale," he agreed. "And if the wind don't shift before the tide turns, the sea's going to roll in here clean across the flats. She'll pour over the reefs in a reg'lar flood."

"Oh, never, Tobias!"

"I believe 'twill," he repeated. "We're likely to have such another high tide as we had in ninety-eight. Our cellar was full then, and no mistake."

"Why, Tobias Bassett, there isn't any cellar to this lighthouse."

"Oh, sugar! So there ain't. Ne'r mind. It would have been full if we'd had a cellar," he chuckled. "And this comin' tide may be like it. It'll maybe wash out the shell road. It did that time."

"Then I would better hurry home. I may be marooned here all night if I don't."

"Wal, maybe so. But you're welcome to stay, and I guess Miss Ida won't worry none about ye."

When Lorna ran downstairs she felt, after all, that she could not leave Tobias alone to fumble with the housekeeping. He had all he could do unassisted to attend to the light.

"And poor Miss Heppy in bed," the girl murmured. "I'll get dinner for them anyway before I go. An invalid would fare poorly in this tower to-day with only Tobias about."

No staples were lacking in the lighthouse pantry, and Lorna was a capable housewife. Her culinary attempts might not match Miss Heppy's, but the latter praised her willing helper.

"I dunno what I should have done without ye, Lorna," she declared. "I just felt as though I was all in. I couldn't lift a finger to help myself, nor Tobias either."

"I am not sure that you shouldn't have a doctor, even now, Miss Heppy," the younger woman observed.

"For love's sake! What do I want a doctor messin' with me for? Doctors air for broken bones and young children. Common sense is the only doctor I've had for a good many years. And I know as well as you do, Lorna, that there ain't nothing re'lly the matter with me, only worriment. I'm an old fool, and that's all there is to it! But it does seem as though I couldn't begin all over again, saving the pennies and going without, and stinting ourselves. We'll end in the poorhouse, Tobias and me, like enough. Oh, dear, oh, dear!"

She concluded with a sob, and Lorna stole out of the room. There was nothing she could say that would really comfort Miss Heppy. She had, as Tobias said, "let go all holts." If the money was actually lost, the young woman pitied Tobias as much as she did Miss Heppy. The latter was going to be more lachrymose than ever.

"Perhaps Tobias is more than half right," Lorna thought, as she bustled about her work. "They never have had any good of the money they scrimped so hard to save; or of Captain Jethro's legacy, either. Just knowing it was in the bank was no very great satisfaction. And now it _isn't_!"

She prepared a hearty meal for Tobias, who ate gratefully but in a more serious mood than he was wont to display. He went up to the lamp room again as soon as the meal was over.

"There don't seem to be any let-up in sight," he told Lorna, "and I feel like I'd ought to be right on the job, as the feller said."

She cleared away and washed the dishes. All the time the booming of the breakers and the crash of the wind against the trembling light tower made unhappy music in her ears.

She went to the door to look out. The sand barrens were being most viciously beaten by both wind and spray. She dreaded the walk back to Clay Head. When she went she thought she would better follow the shell road even if it was much the longer way home. Not a moving object appeared in the near-by landscape.

Suppose Ralph had boarded the fishing schooner? It was now probably far out to sea. Any craft must make a good offing in such a hurricane to be safe.

Ralph's possible peril kept recurring to the girl's anxious mind. The accusation that he had helped in the bank burglary might, in the end, prove ridiculous. But his peril from the elements could not be gainsaid.

Yes, she was angry with Ralph. He had shown, she thought, little appreciation of her personal attractions that day when they returned in his motor boat from Lower Trillion after the black squall. Lorna had been in a tender mood that afternoon and Ralph--he had practically ignored her!

That she had forbidden him to display any lover-like attitude toward her did not enter into Lorna's consideration. There are times when even the most practical young woman does not expect a man to believe she means what she says.

In addition, the spectre of Cora Devine continually rose in Lorna's thoughts. There was a mystery between Ralph and that girl. It had to be explained before Lorna could readmit her old friend to her confidence.

When Lorna climbed the stairs once more to the lamp room it was mid-afternoon, and she realized that darkness would shut down very early upon sea and land. Already Miss Heppy's chickens had gone to roost. Lorna had beaten her way out to the coop to feed them and found them cowering upon their perches. There was the element of threatening disaster in the very air.

As she came up into the lamp room the turmoil of the gale seemed to have increased tenfold. One could not have stood in safety upon the narrow gallery outside the windows.

Tobias had his old-fashioned "captain's glass" to his eye--an ancient telescope that had been round the world on many a voyage--and held it focused on a point some miles to the southward.

"What is it, Tobias?" Lorna asked, coming close to him before he realized her presence.

"I give it as my opinion that it is a craft of some kind, and she's making heavy weather of it. But I can't make out if it's a two-stick or a three-stick vessel. Seems to have lost some of her gear for'ard."

He allowed Lorna to take the heavy glass and aided her to fix upon the exact spot where, now and then, the masts of the laboring vessel heaved into view.

"Is she in danger, do you think, Tobias?" Lorna asked.

The question was expressed in her countenance, and Tobias nodded. "Naterally!" he mouthed with vigor. "Any sort o' craft is in danger so near shore. I warrant the boys air watchin' her down to Lower Trillion. She's about off their station now.

"Come on," he added, putting the glass away in its beckets and starting for the hatchway. "Let's go below for a spell." He did not want the girl to watch that staggering, gale-buffeted craft out there. "I feel sort o' famished for a cup o' something hot. Heppy usually has her teapot on the stove about this time, and she's gettin' me purt' near broke in to liking that old maid's tipple," and he chuckled.

But when they descended to the kitchen Tobias chanced to peer out of the window overlooking the road first of all. He ejaculated:

"My soul and body! what's come to pass now, I want to know?"

Lorna ran to look over his shoulder. The big blue limousine belonging to the bank president had just halted before the lighthouse. The shabbily dressed detective was getting out.

"Oh!" Lorna cried. "What can he want here again?"

"I cal'late he thinks this is a bubblin' fount of information," grumbled Tobias. "Huh! But maybe we'll l'arn more than he does, Lorny."

They did. The detective entered unsmilingly when the lightkeeper opened the door.

"Have you heard anything more of that young Endicott?" he asked Tobias, merely nodding to the young woman.

"Wal, nothing that ye might call authoritative," the old man said slowly. "There's rumors----"

"Yes. We've run some of them down. He was mixed up in that break at the bank as sure as guns," the detective interposed with much assurance.

"Oh!" gasped Lorna, sitting down suddenly.

The man flashed a glance at her that seemed questioning; but he continued to address Tobias.

"We have learned that he is a pretty shrewd fellow--up to a certain point. All these crooks fall down at some place or another."

Again Lorna spoke. "How dare you?" she demanded, but under her breath.

The man gave her another swift glance but made her no reply. He went on coolly to Tobias:

"He planned his alibi with some smartness. Shipped his trunk to a New Bedford wharf where a fishing schooner called the _Nelly G._ was tied up. Sent it on his ticket. But he slipped off the train and came back to Clinkerport in the evening. This was the night of the robbery, you understand."

"How do you know all this?" demanded the young woman, with strong emotion.

"Well, the chap that first put me wise to it was a fellow named Degger. Stopping at the hotel in town. Oh, he knows Endicott well," added the detective confidently. "Went to college with him. That's where the boys show up their real characters oftentimes. They're away from home and cut loose from mamma's apron-strings. This Endicott certainly was a cut-up at Cambridge."

"So Degger says, eh?" muttered the lightkeeper.

"Oh, he only gave me the first steer. I soon beat up further evidence. And, anyway, he was back in Clinkerport late that evening," added the detective. "He was seen by more than one. It seems Endicott had about five hundred dollars in the bank. He could not check it out over the bank counter so late, but he got the postmaster to cash his check for that sum."

"Five hundred dollars?" murmured Tobias. "Oh, sugar! That's a mort o' money to take with him on a fishing v'y'ge. Humph!"

"He's got more than that with him," said the other grimly. "But that's the reason he and his friends didn't blow the post-office safe. There was nothing left in it but the stamps. That young sharper cleaned up all the cash the postmaster happened to have on hand."

"Humph!" again repeated Tobias. "So he did all that, did he? And then?"

"Don't fret," said the detective airily. "We know about everything he did in Clinkerport that evening before the bank burglary. Yes, sir. He sent a registered package--let's see? Yes, here's the address. Do either of you know this woman?"

He thrust forward a card which he took from his vest pocket. Tobias did not offer to accept it, but Lorna leaned forward and repeated aloud the name and address:

"'Miss Cora Devine, 27 Canstony Street, Charlestown, Mass.'"

"There's always some woman mixed up in these affairs. This Devine girl is probably a crook's light o' love. I've put our Boston office onto her. Oh, we'll round up the whole gang before we get through."

"How about rounding up the money that was stole?" demanded Tobias with some disgust. "Seems to me that'd be more to the p'int."

"Don't you worry about that, either, old scout," said the detective. "We know where a part of the money is all right--the biggest share of it in all probability."

"Huh? Where?"

"In that suitcase this gay young Endicott took aboard that catboat down to Peehawket Cove," snapped the other.

"Oh, sugar!"

"And where is he and that catboat?" ventured Lorna, in a very small voice.

"According to report, the catboat is a wreck down there on what is called the jaw of Cape Fisher."

"Now, now, Lorny!" exclaimed Tobias, rising suddenly and going around the table to the young woman's side. "Don't you believe it!"

"Oh, to the best of my belief," the detective hastened to say, "Endicott abandoned the catboat. Over the long-distance 'phone, by way of Harbor Bar, I got the tip that Endicott did board that fishing boat, the _Nelly G_. I understand she is bound for the Grand Banks. That was his scheme for an alibi. He thought himself pretty shrewd, no doubt. But we'll get him yet."

"You're sure o' that, be ye?" sighed Tobias.

"Well, I'd bet money on it," rejoined the man with confidence.

"So he got aboard the _Nelly G._ after all?" ruminated Tobias.

"He was seen to by two witnesses. He had to abandon the catboat, the sea was so heavy. It was just before dark last evening."

"Oh!" and the lightkeeper comfortingly patted Lorna's shoulder. "Then she's well on her way to the banks. Of course."

"Don't be too sure of that," said the detective. "That is what brings me down this way. I am on my way to the Lower Trillion life-saving station. It is reported that the _Nelly G._ is in trouble somewhere off there. The wires are down, so that we could not communicate with the station direct. But a fellow was up from Peehawket--that old fellow that owned the catboat--and he came to the bank and told Mr. Thompson."

"You mean to say," Tobias asked hoarsely, "that the schooner's in trouble? This schooner that Ralph Endicott boarded?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. What's the matter with that girl?"

Tobias with flushed visage and angry eyes faced the detective. Lorna sat rigidly in the chair, her eyes closed, her face pallid.

"What did Gyp Pellet say? What's the matter with the _Nelly G._?" demanded the lightkeeper. "She has been beating off and on all night and to-day. She has got distress signals flying. I am going down there to find out what it means. I guess that Endicott fellow won't get so far away, after all."

Tobias took both the small hands of the girl in his big one. He leaned above her, patting her shoulder tenderly. There was understanding in his attitude, as there was at last in Lorna's heart.

She no longer could deny the truth. Ralph Endicott was in dire peril if the _Nelly G._ was threatened with disaster. And she could not hide the fact that she loved him!