"Now, I’ll get down here, if you don’t mind," added the fellow, as they came to the Outskirts of Clinkerport. "Thanks for the lift. I’ve had my lesson, I have. I’m going to mind my own affairs strictly in the future. I’m sorry for the Devine girl; but she’ll have to fight her own battles as far as Endicott is concerned. Good-day, Miss Nicholet." Lorna could not even find voice to tell Jackson to drive on. But he did so on his own initiative while Lorna sat very upright in the tonneau of the car, clutching that leaf of Ralph’s address book in her hand. CHAPTER XVII REAL TROUBLE Many a Paul Revere has ridden through New England hamlets since the original courier of that name and fame saw the lights twinkle in Old North’s steeple. None ever carried more exciting news to the rural folk than Zeke Bassett in his motor car brought to the Twin Rocks Light early on this summer morning. For two months the life saving crews were excused from duty at the stations. Only the captain of the crew remained on guard at the Lower Trillion station. These two summer months Zeke usually spent with Tobias and Heppy at the Light. Occasionally Zeke made an odd dollar taking a passenger to and from the railroad station. On this morning he had driven a neighbor to the early train—"the clam train"—that stopped at Clinkerport at 5:30. When he came back he scattered along the shell road driblets of news that was destined to flash over the countryside in wide excitement. Zeke kept his car under Ezra Condon’s shed down the road, but he stopped before Miss Heppy’s flower garden, where she was weeding, to tell her the news. He startled her so that the lightkeeper’s sister fell back in the sand, trowel in hand, her broad face paling slowly under the peak of her sunbonnet. "Zeke! You don’t mean it’s true?" demanded Miss Heppy in a smothered shriek. "Cross my heart, Cousin Heppy!" declared the young man. "There’s a crowd around the door already—and it’s shut. They’ll be howlin’ there like wolves b’fore noon." He started the shaking car again, and it wheezed away. Miss Heppy was several moments getting upon her feet. All strength seemed to have left her limbs. She tottered into the lighthouse. Tobias was up in the lamp room polishing the brasswork. She might have called to him, but it did not seem to her that she could lift her voice sufficiently to make him hear. Weak as she felt bodily, she started to climb the spiral stair. That climb was an unforgettable experience for Hephzibah Bassett. The higher she climbed the lower her spirits fell. In all her long life disaster had never looked so black and threatening before her as it did now.