"Don’t you remember how she talked to me that night we were stormbound here? Didn’t she fairly drive me out of the lighthouse right at the worst of the gale? You said yourself it wasn’t a night fit for a dog to be out in. If I’d undertaken to walk to Clinkerport they’d have found me along the road somewhere, frozen stiff! That’s all she cared about me." "Oh, sugar!" said Tobias again, "I wouldn’t hold that against her. She’s spirited, Lorny is. She was mad with you——" "I should say she was!" "But she didn’t re’lly mean it," pursued the lightkeeper. "If she had thought you were in danger she’d never driv’ you out. I’m sartain sure, Ralph, that she thinks a heap of you." "She shows it!" "No, she don’t show it. No more than you show how you re’lly feel toward her." "Huh!" "Oh, I know," declared Tobias wagging a confident head. "You wouldn’t see no harm come to Lorny. That’s why I tell you as I do that this Degger—’nless he’s a sight richer than he ’pears to be—ain’t got no business shining around her. I give it as my opinion that Lorna’s friends have got to come to her rescue and see that she marries a rich man." He stopped right there. Tobias Bassett was wise in his iniquity. Without coming out unequivocally and stating in so many words that the Nicholets had lost the greater part of their wealth, he had intimated enough to trouble the waters of Ralph’s mind. The latter could not visualize the luxury-loving, softly-bred girl as a poor man’s wife. Why, Lorna never could in this world endure privation, or even a lack of those things which only money—and plenty of it—could purchase. "Poor girl!" was the young man’s secret thought. "She has always expected to have plenty of money in her own right some day. Wonder what John Nicholet has been doing with the family fortune? Speculating, I bet! He’s a visionary chap. "But—but it seems terrible for Lorna if she must marry wealth to save the family from penury. And she all unconscious of the fate in store for her. It is a wicked, wicked shame!" CHAPTER X STARTING SOMETHING It was long before this that the lightkeeper and his sister had been put in possession of Jethro Potts’ personal estate by Judge Waddams. The nine days’ wonder of that happening was past for Clinkerport folk, and as the old couple made no splurge with their fortune, the neighbors put aside the matter for fresher gossip. With a stern hand Miss Heppy had put down incipient rebellion on her brother’s part. The legacy added to what they already had in the bank made "just a little bit more." "And that’s purt’ average unsatisfying," complained Tobias on occasion. "You mean to tell me, Tobias Bassett, that it ain’t a satisfying feeling to know you got nigh eight thousand dollars in the bank?"