"_She_ was no innocent kid. Believe me, Skipper, that Devine girl knew her way about. Why, I was told she’d been trooping with a burlesque show. Ralph Endicott made a perfect jack of himself over her. It was even rumored that they ran off and were married once when he was half-stewed." Tobias jumped on the bench and uttered a startled exclamation. "What is the matter, Skipper?" "Must o’ been one of them pesky sandfleas," muttered the lightkeeper. "Wal, go on with your tale o’ crime." "Ha! Ha! No crime about it. Just Endicott’s foolishness. If he did marry her, I’m sorry for him. She’ll be bobbing up to confront him later. Such girls always do. They are expensive trimmings to a fellow’s college career." "I cal’late," agreed Tobias, more calmly. But later he sounded Heppy on a topic which he had not touched upon since back in the late winter when Lorna and Ralph had been stormbound at the light. "Didn’t Lorny say something to you about Ralph paying ’tentions to some gal at college? Wasn’t she some worked up about it?" "For love’s sake, Tobias, she never spoke as though she’d feel jealous any if Ralph Endicott had forty girls! I should say not! She did mention that Ralph had some love affair when he was at school. But she called it puppy love," concluded Miss Heppy, with a sniff. "Humph! Sort o’ scorned it, did she? It didn’t seem to worry her none?" "Worry her? I should say not! But I guess ’twas only gossip at that. I don’t believe Ralph Endicott is the sort of a boy to play fast and loose with any girl." "Does seem as though we feel about alike on that score, Heppy," reflected her brother. "Ralph, it strikes me, is purt’ sound timber. But I wonder, now, where Lorna Nicholet got her information about Ralph’s chasing around after that chorus gal? Does seem as though such a story _might_ be one o’ the things that makes Lorna so determined to cut Ralph adrift. Oh, sugar!" But these final reflections of the lightkeeper were inaudible. He had by no means lost interest in his matchmaking intrigue regarding the two young people who he was convinced were "jest about made for each other." His scheme—if scheme he had—had been in abeyance all these weeks. Now that the families of the young people were about to take up their residence on the Clay Head, he proposed to enter upon a more active campaign for what he believed to be the happiness of all concerned. Not alone was Miss Heppy aware of the long-past bond of affection between Miss Ida Nicholet and Ralph’s Uncle Henry. Tobias Bassett had been just as observant as his sister—or anybody else. Like others, he had wondered twenty years before why the then young Professor Endicott had not pursued with more vigor the charming, if independent, Ida Nicholet, and made her his bride. _There_ was a romance nipped in the bud which Tobias always felt he might have mended—"if he’d put his mind to it."