“I tell you what it is, Uncle Seth,” interrupted the younger member of the two he had addressed, who had come in for his share of wetting, “I’m not going to stand out here to get soaked to the skin. I have a regard for my constitution, if you haven’t, so allow me to wish you a very good evening.” The speaker at once suited the action to the word, and disappeared through the door into the lighthouse, and his example was speedily followed by his two companions. The exchange from the cold and wet outside to the warmth and comfort within was in every way agreeable, and in a little while tea was ready, and the party sat down fully prepared to enjoy it. While they are so engaged just a word or two about them. Seth Lawrence was a fine, muscular man, who had seen plenty of rough service in his time, but appeared none the worse for the buffeting. He was the very “_beau ideal_” of an Englishman, cool, resolute, and indomitable, and in every way suited for the post in which we find him. Neither chick nor child had Seth, but his nephew Charlie was to him as a son, and the lad in his turn looked upon him in the light of a father. Gunnerstone Reef was scarcely the spot on which to spend Christmas Day as a matter of preference, but with these two, who had no ties of kindred or relationship on shore, it was just as good as any other. Not so was it with Bill Marston, he was anything but satisfied with the arrangements that compelled him to eat his plum pudding in the lighthouse, and had been making himself miserable for some time past about the hardness of his lot. But all the sulking in the world could not alter the state of affairs, and so he himself began to think, as he sat down to tea on the evening when we first make his acquaintance. He was short and somewhat squat in figure, and by the side of Seth presented very much the same appearance as does a steam-tug in the company of a screw frigate. But though Bill Marston was short in stature, he was an awkward customer to get to close quarters with, as a certain cheeky jack tar, who came with the revenue cutter to the lighthouse on one occasion, had good cause to remember. He was a singularly good hand with a rifle, and when the sea was calm, and no craft were in the way, would amuse himself practising. He had lately been giving Charlie lessons in shooting, and his pupil progressed with a rapidity that excited his hearty admiration. Just a word or two of that young gentleman, and then “_revenons à nos moutons_.” Charlie Fairfield was an orphan; his mother, Seth’s sister, had died when he was quite a baby, never having quite recovered from the shock her husband’s being lost at sea in a storm had occasioned her. With her last breath she bequeathed her blue-eyed baby boy to Seth, and he, with tears coursing down his brown cheeks, swore “that he’d stick to the kid through foul and fair weather, and as long as he’d a shilling in the locker the “young un” should have half.” And, as I have said before, no oath was