His sister turned, frying-fork in hand, and peered through her spectacles at the snow-covered figures of the visitors. She was a comfortably built person, was Hephzibah Bassett, with rosy-brown, unwrinkled face, despite her unacknowledged age of fifty-odd. Her iron-gray hair was parted in the center and crinkled over her ears in tiny plaits, being caught in a small "bob" low on her plump neck behind. She never went to bed at night without braiding her hair on the side in several "pigtails" (to use her brother’s unsavory expression) to be combed out into this wavy effect when she changed her house gown in the afternoon. It was a style of hair-dressing which, if old-fashioned, became her well. There was something very wholesome and kindly appearing about Hephzibah Bassett. She might not possess the shrewdness of her brother, the lightkeeper, and she did nag a good bit. Yet spinsterhood had not withered her smile nor squeezed dry her fount of human kindness. "For love’s sake!" she cried now, when she had identified the petite figure shaking its furs free of the sticky snow. "If ’tain’t Lorny Nicholet! Do come and give me a kiss, Lorny. I can’t leave these fishballs or they’d scorch." The girl wriggled out of her coat and let it drop to the braided mat. She was just such a looking girl as one might expect from her name. There was French blood in the Nicholets. Lorna was distinctly of the brunette type, small limbed, as lithe as a feline. Perhaps that was why she could scratch! There were little short curls framing her broad, low forehead. The gloss of a crow’s wing accentuated the blackness of her hair. Her face glowed now from facing the storm—or was it from indignation? Her eyes sparkled so luminously that one could not be sure whether they were black or brown. She was one of those girls who seem all alive, all of the time. She had the alert appearance of a wild bird on the twig—ready for instant flight. "Oh, how good it smells in here, Miss Heppy!" She fluttered across the big kitchen and imprinted upon the woman’s cheek a warm kiss. She hugged, too, the ample arm that Heppy did not use in turning the fishballs in the deep frying kettle. "You certain sure give us a surprise, Lorny," said the lightkeeper’s sister. "Of course I intended giving you a call as we passed," the girl said. "But I started for the special purpose of looking over the house for Aunt Ida and listing such new things as we shall need for the summer. _This_ doesn’t look much like summer, does it?" "Oh, it’s the last quintal of winter, I cal’late," said the woman, spearing a brown cake. "Lucky I made a mess of these. I didn’t really expect any visitors to-night." "That’s just it, Miss Heppy! How will I ever get back to Harbor Bar to-night?" "You won’t. Why should you? Your aunt will know you are safe—with him." Miss Heppy glanced slyly around at Ralph Endicott, whom she had but briefly greeted. The girl, seeing her glance, pouted.