"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.