"My soul and body, Lorny! I sartainly be glad to see you. I thought mebbe you wouldn’t get over, it’s such a gale." He did not notice her agitation, for his attention was fixed upon the maltreated eggs. "I could cook once for a crew of haddockers good enough; but none of them was invalids. An egg is the loosest thing! I vum! how d’ye make ’em stay together, Lorny?" But the almost breathless girl had that on her mind that precluded her taking any interest in culinary puzzles. She leaned against the door she had closed behind her, and gasped: "What about Ralph? Have you heard anything more? Do you know if he is safe?" "Why, I cal’late he is," the lightkeeper rejoined slowly, looking at her now with attention. "I don’t know just why he put to sea out of Peehawket Cove ’stead o’ going to New Bedford to jine the _Nelly G._——" "To join the _Nelly G._?" repeated the young woman. "What for?" "Going to the Banks, I cal’late. He let it be known that he was waiting outside o’ Cape Fisher for the _Nelly G._ to come along." "He is running away, then!" cried Lorna. "What do you mean?" said Tobias, forgetting the eggs entirely. "You ain’t got no reason, Lorny, to think so bad of Ralph. He didn’t have nothing to do with that bank robbery—nossir!" "You cannot prove that, Tobias Bassett," she cried wildly. "You—you don’t know all—all that might have tempted him. And he being without money." "Oh, sugar!" muttered the worried lightkeeper, reddening like a schoolboy caught in a peccadillo. Then: "I tell you there ain’t no reason. He ain’t poor." "Why, Tobias Bassett! if Professor Endicott has lost all his money——" "But he ain’t! It’s all torn foolishness. I—I just told you I’d _heard_ ’twas so, Lorny. And I did hear it. You know how gossip goes in Clinkerport. Them story-mongers has had Henry Endicott ruined financially because of his inventions a score of times." "But you told me——" "Oh, sugar! I didn’t have no business to tell you such a thing. I never ought to have said it," stammered the lightkeeper. "I was figgerin’ that the matter with you young folks—you and Ralph—was that you both had too much money. If you was poor I cal’lated you’d begin to have pity for each other and, as the feller said, ’pity is akin to love.’" "Tobias Bassett, you deliberately deceived me? Ralph Endicott is not poor at all?" Her face was suddenly aflame. Her eyes sparkled with rage. She stamped her foot. Tobias had no difficulty in keeping a straight face now. In truth he could not have called up a grin to save his life. "That’s just what I done, Lorna," he confessed. "I cal’late I trimmed my sails purt’ close to the truth and no mistake. Didn’t just foresee this difficulty, that’s a fact. But you disabuse your mind right now of the idea of Ralph Endicott being anything different from what he’s always been—as straight as a main stick and as clean as a whistle." "But that penknife you found—and his address book?" she gasped.