owed for weeks along the shores of
Four Winds Harbor had faded out into the soft gray-blue of late
autumnal hills. There came many days when fields and shores were dim
with misty rain, or shivering before the breath of a melancholy
sea-wind--nights, too, of storm and tempest, when Anne sometimes
wakened to pray that no ship might be beating up the grim north shore,
for if it were so not even the great, faithful light whirling through
the darkness unafraid, could avail to guide it into safe haven.

"In November I sometimes feel as if spring could never come again," she
sighed, grieving over the hopeless unsightliness of her frosted and
bedraggled flower-plots. The gay little garden of the schoolmaster's
bride was rather a forlorn place now, and the Lombardies and birches
were under bare poles, as Captain Jim said. But the fir-wood behind
the little house was forever green and staunch; and even in November
and December there came gracious days of sunshine and purple hazes,
when the harbor danced and sparkled as blithely as in midsummer, and
the gulf was so softly blue and tender that the storm and the wild wind
seemed only things of a long-past dream.

Anne and Gilbert spent many an autumn evening at the lighthouse. It
was always a cheery place. Even when the east wind sang in minor and
the sea was dead and gray, hints of sunshine seemed to be lurking all
about it. Perhaps this was because the First Mate always paraded it in
panoply of gold. He was so large and effulgent that one hardly missed
the sun, and his resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to
the laughter and conversation which went on around Captain Jim's
fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high
converse on matters beyond the ken of cat or king.

"I like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I can't solve 'em,"
said Captain Jim. "My father held that we should never talk of things
we couldn't understand, but if we didn't, doctor, the subjects for
conversation would be mighty few. I reckon the gods laugh many a time
to hear us, but what matters so long as we remember that we're only men
and don't take to fancying that we're gods ourselves, really, knowing
good and evil. I reckon our pow-wows won't do us or anyone much harm,
so let's have another whack at the whence, why and whither this
evening, doctor."

While they "whacked," Anne listened or dreamed. Sometimes Leslie went
to the lighthouse with them, an