"Oh, sugar!" ejaculated the lightkeeper, drawing forth a short clay pipe and a sack of cut tobacco. "I cal’late that you folks with money have more real troubles than what we poor folks do." "Huh! _Money!_" scoffed Endicott. "Yep. It’s mighty poor bait for fish, I cal’late. You can’t even chum with it." "Money isn’t everything," said the young man shrugging his shoulders. "True. True as preaching," cried Tobias. "But ’twill buy most everything you’re likely to need in this world. And you’ve got enough, Ralph, to keep you from getting gray-headed before your time worrying about where your three meals a day are coming from. I don’t see what can be wrong with you. And that purty gal——" "Now stop, Tobias Bassett!" exclaimed Endicott. "Don’t keep reminding me of Lorna. I get enough of that at home." "Wal!" gasped the lightkeeper. "For you to speak so of Lorna! Why, that’s the main-skys’l-pole of the whole suit of spars—only needs the main-truck to cap it. What do you mean?" "Now, mind you," Endicott said earnestly. "I haven’t a thing to say against Lorna. She’s a nice girl—for some other fellow. But I declare to you, Tobias, _I won’t marry her_." "Oh, sugar!" "Just because my Uncle Henry and her Aunt Ida have planned for us to do so since we were little tads running about the beaches here, is no reason why I should be tied up to Lorna forever and ever, Amen!" "That’s a mighty hard sayin’——" "You think, like everybody else, that Lorna and I were made for each other. We weren’t! We’d fight all the time. We always do fight. Look at to-night. The first little thing that goes wrong she jumps at me. I’m sick of playing dog and rolling over every time Lorna orders me to. "And look at the mess we’re in to-night!" "What’s the matter with you, boy?" demanded the lighthouse keeper. "You’re under shelter. There’s grub enough in the light to stave off starvation for a spell. Nothing can’t happen to your buzz-cart worse than its being drifted under with snow." "Oh, you don’t understand, Tobias!" said the exasperated Ralph. "Our going off in my car the way we did, and not getting back to-night—why! it’ll be all over Harbor Bar that we’ve eloped." "I see," said the lightkeeper between puffs of his short pipe. Then: "You don’t cal’late to marry Lorna?" "I won’t have her thrown at me." "I never had no gal throwed at me," Tobias reflected. "I dunno how ’twould feel. But I will say that if I had to catch such a throw as Lorna Nicholet, I surely wouldn’t make a muff of it!" "That’s all right," observed Endicott. "I’m not saying she isn’t a nice enough girl. But I don’t believe she really wants me any more than I want her. In fact, I know there was another fellow last year that she was interested in. A chap named Conny Degger. He was in my class at college. Kind of a sport, but I guess he’s all right, at that. But Lorna’s Aunt Ida broke it up. Wouldn’t let Conny shine around Lorna any more when she learned about it.