friend. "As long as it's got to blow it might as well blow now and
be over. I'd kind o' set my heart on Bart's comin', but I guess I've
waited so long I kin wait a day or two more. I wrote him to come by
train, but he wrote back he had a lot o' plunder and he'd better put it
'board the Polly; and, besides, he said he kind o' wanted to sail into
the inlet like he used to when he was a boy. Then again, I couldn't
meet him; not with this weather comin' on. No--take it all in all, I'm
glad he ain't comin'."

"Well, I guess yer right, captain," answered uncle Isaac in an even
tone, as he left the room to overhaul the cork jackets. The occasion
was not one of absorbing interest to Isaac.

By the time the table was cleared and the kitchen once more in order
not only were the windows on the sea side of the house roughly shaken
by the rising gale, but the sand caught from the dunes was being
whirled against their panes. The tide, too, egged on by the storm, had
crept up the slope of the dunes, the spray drenching the grass-tufts.

At five o'clock the wind blew forty miles an hour at sundown it had
increased to fifty; at eight o'clock it bowled along at sixty. Morgan,
who had been to the village for supplies, reported that the tide was
over the dock at Barnegat and that the roof of the big bathing-house at
Beach Haven had been ripped off and landed on the piazza. He had had
all he could do to keep his feet and his basket while crossing the
marsh on his way back to the station. Then he added:

"There's a lot o' people there yit. That feller from Philadelphy who's
mashed on Cobden's aunt was swellin' around in a potato-bug suit o'
clothes as big as life." This last was given from behind his hand after
he had glanced around the room and found that Archie was absent.

At eight o'clock, when Parks and Archie left the Station to begin their
patrol, Parks was obliged to hold on to the rail of the porch to steady
himself, and Archie, being less sure of his feet, was blown against the
water-barrel before he could get his legs well under him. At the edge
of the surf the two separated for their four hours' patrol, Archie
breasting the gale on his way north, and Parks hurrying on, helped by
the wind, to the south.

At ten o'clock Parks returned. He had made his first round, and had
exchanged his brass check with the patrol at the next station. As he
mounted the sand-dune he quickened his steps, hurried to the Station,
opened the sitti