BY LEONARD KIP. _Overland Monthly, January, 1870._ It was called Beacon Ledge fully fifty years before the present lighthouse had been built upon it. For it was said that long ago, when wrecking was a profitable trade along the coast, and goodly vessels were frequently, by false lights, decoyed to their destruction, there was no more favorable point for the exercise of that systematic villainy than this rocky, high-lifted bluff. Projecting three or four hundred feet into the sea, with a gradually curved, sweeping line, it formed, to be sure, upon the one side, a limited anchorage--safe enough for those who knew it; but, upon the other side, it looked upon a waste of shoal, dotted, here and there, at lowest tide, with craggy breakers, and, at high water, smooth, smiling, and deceitful, with the covered dangers. Here, then, upon certain dark and stormy nights, the flaming beacon of destruction would glow brightly against the black sky, and wildly lighten up the cruel faces of those who stood by and piled on the fagots, while gazing eagerly out to sea to mark the effect of their evil machinations. Nor was it until some thirty years ago that the gangs of wretches were thoroughly broken up, and this, their favorite vantage-ground, wrested from them, and the tall, white lighthouse there securely founded--maintaining in mercy what had before been held as a blighting curse; lifting itself, like a nation's warning finger, and with its calm, serene glow, pointing out the path of safety. Then, in the mouths of all the surrounding inhabitants, Beacon Ledge became known as Beacon Ledge Beacon, and so kept its name, in spite of tautological criticism, or of different and more formal christening, by Government authority.