ince there was no demand for justice and the
peace was never broken in the small lazy village, married them as well
as he could in a surprised sort of a way, and instead of receiving a
fee gave one, which Melvyna, however, promptly rescued from the
bridegroom's willing hand, and returned with the remark that there was
no "call for alms" (pronounced as if it rhymed with hams), and that two
shilling, or mebbe three, she guessed, would be about right for the
job. This sum she deposited on the table, and then took leave, walking
off with a quick, enterprising step, followed by her acquiescent and
admiring bridegroom. He had remained acquiescent and admiring ever
since, and now, as light-house keeper on Pelican island, he admired and
acquiesced more than ever; while Melvyna kept the house in order,
cooked his dinners, and tended his light, which, although only third
class, shone and glittered under her daily care in the old square tower
which was founded by the Spaniards, heightened by the English, and now
finished and owned by the United States, whose light-house board said
to each other every now and then that really they must put a
first-class Fresnal on Pelican island and a good substantial tower
instead of that old-fashioned beacon. They did so a year or two later;
and a hideous barber's pole it remains to the present day. But when
Carrington and Keith landed there the square tower still stood in its
gray old age, at the very edge of the ocean, so that high tides swept
the step of the keeper's house. It was originally a lookout where the
Spanish soldier stood and fired his culverin when a vessel came in
sight outside the reef; then the British occupied the land, added a
story, and placed an iron grating on the top, where their
coastguardsman lighted a fire of pitch-pine knots that flared up
against the sky, with the tidings, "A sail! a sail!" Finally the United
States came into possession, ran up a third story, and put in a
revolving light, one flash for the land and two for the sea, a
proportion unnecessarily generous now to the land, since nothing came
in any more, and everything went by, the little harbor being of no
importance since the indigo culture had failed. But ships still sailed
by on their way to the Queen of the Antilles, and to the far Windward
and Leeward islands, and the old light went on revolving, presumably
for their benefit. The tower, gray and crumbling, and the keeper's
house, were surrounded by a h