As she mounted the steps she noted with surprise that one of the cellar windows right at hand was uncovered. The plank shutter lay upon the snow, and there were marks about the window that might have been made by somebody entering the house. "And such a night as last night was," murmured the amazed girl. "I can scarcely believe there was a thief here." Indeed, marauders of any character were seldom a menace upon the Cape. The summer people who occupied the houses along Clay Head merely locked their doors in winter and left them until the next season without fear of trespassers. Lorna slowly fitted the key in the lock and opened the door. She entered softly. Could it be possible that an intruder was now in the house? At the left of this side entry was a small sitting-room. When the outer door was closed she distinctly felt a warm current of air from between the draperies that had been left hanging in the sitting-room doorway. Amazed, she stepped hurriedly forward and held aside the curtain to look in. There was a smouldering fire in the grate. Lying outstretched upon the floor, with a rug wrapped about him, was a man. He was asleep, and for the moment Lorna could not see his face, nor did she imagine who he could be. She tiptoed around the table, and then she saw the sleeper’s flaxen head. Suddenly he started, rolled over, and sat up. He opened sleep-clouded eyes. "Is—is that you, Lorna?" he yawned. The girl’s face flamed and her eyes fairly sparked with wrath. She made a futile gesture with both hands as she backed away from Ralph Endicott. "Oh, you—you——" She could not articulate her disgust. Of all the perfectly useless fellows she had ever heard of, Ralph took the palm! Without uttering another word the girl left the room and the house. Ralph had managed to spoil everything, after all. He had not gone to Clinkerport and telephoned to Harbor Bar. The tongue of scandal would not be stilled as she had hoped it might. And Lorna Nicholet considered it quite scandalous for her friends to believe that she and Ralph Endicott were "as good as engaged." "I’ll never forgive him! I’ll never forgive him!" she cried over and over, as she tramped back to the light. She made no comment then to either Miss Heppy or Tobias about what she had found at the house. She did not even notice the old lightkeeper’s sly glances. He had followed Ralph’s footprints by lantern-light in the storm the night before and knew where the young man had taken shelter after being driven from the lighthouse by Lorna’s sharp tongue. Endicott did not appear that day at the Twin Rocks Light. But he must have gone on to Clinkerport after Lorna’s unexpected visit to the house on Clay Head aroused him, for the next day—the shell road having become passable again for motor cars—he came out with a truck from the garage to tow his roadster into town.