"I do allow," admitted Miss Heppy, "that Lorna thinks as little of Ralph’s money as she seems to of the boy himself. And he’s a nice boy." "And she’s just the nicest gal that ever stepped in shoe-leather," rejoined the lightkeeper stoutly. "They don’t ’preciate each other," sighed Miss Heppy. "Ain’t it so? I give it as my opinion that if they was poor—re’l poor—they would fall in love with each other quick enough." "I dunno——" "_I do,_" declared the confident lightkeeper. "It’s a case o’ money being no good at all to them young ones. If Ralph had to dig clams or clerk it in a bank for a living, and Lorny didn’t have more’n two caliker dresses a year and could not get any more—why! them two would fall in love with each other so hard ’twould hurt. That’s my opinion, Heppy, and I give it for what it’s worth." He knocked the heeltap out of his pipe on the stove hearth. His sister was not giving him her full attention. She raised her eyes from her darning and listened to the storm. The wind shrieked like a company of fiends around the tall tower. The sleet and spray slapped viciously against the shutterless windows on the exposed side of the structure. The woman shook her head. "It’s a terrible night, Tobias. Listen!" From the ocean rose the voice of a blast seemingly worse than any that had gone before. It was the apex of the storm. It drowned anything further Tobias might have said. The hurricane from the sea took the light tower in its arms and shook it. The roar of it made the woman’s face blanch. As the sound poured away into the distance the two in the kitchen heard a crash of glass—then a scream. Tobias dashed for the stairway door. "The lamp!" he shouted. "That ain’t no lamp, Tobias," declared his sister. When he opened the door a gale rushed in and sucked the flame out of the top of the lamp chimney with a "plop!" The stairway seemed filled with a whirling cyclone of wintry air. Tobias heard the clatter of Ralph Endicott’s boots on the iron treads coming down from above. A door was banging madly on the second floor. Lorna screamed again. "The window of the best room’s burst in, Tobias," shouted Miss Heppy. "That poor child!" The lightkeeper had seized his lantern, and now he started up the stairway. But youth was quicker than vigorous old age. Ralph plunged into the bedchamber, the door of which had been burst open by the blast from the wrecked window. The cowering figure of the girl at the foot of the bed, wrapped in Miss Heppy’s voluminous nightgown, was visible in the whirlwind of snow. She sprang toward Ralph with a cry of relief, and the young man gathered her into his arms as though she were a child. "Oh, Ralph!" "All right, Lorna! You’re safe enough. Don’t be frightened," soothed Endicott. For a long moment he sheltered her thus, bulwarking his own body between her and the blast from the window. She cowered in his arms. Then: