ng. It goes on to something definite, like a
wedding or a funeral.

You have not heard, yet, how near the light came to failing, and how the
keeper saved it and something else too. Nataline's story is not told; it
is only begun. This first part is only the introduction, just to let you
see what kind of a girl she was, and how her life was made. If you want
to hear the conclusion, we must hurry along a little faster or we shall
never get to it.

Nataline grew up like a young birch tree--stately and strong, good to
look at. She was beautiful in her place; she fitted it exactly. Her
bronzed face with an under-tinge of red; her low, black eyebrows; her
clear eyes like the brown waters of a woodland stream; her dark, curly
hair with little tendrils always blowing loose around the pillar of her
neck; her broad breast and sloping shoulders; her firm, fearless step;
her voice, rich and vibrant; her straight, steady looks--but there,
who can describe a thing like that? I tell you she was a girl to love
out-of-doors.

There was nothing that she could not do. She could cook; she could swing
an axe; she could paddle a canoe; she could fish; she could shoot; and,
best of all, she could run the lighthouse. Her father's devotion to it
had gone into her blood. It was the centre of her life, her law of God.
There was nothing about it that she did not understand and love. From
the first of April to the tenth of December the flashing of that light
was like the beating of her heart--steady, even, unfaltering. She kept
time to it as unconsciously as the tides follow the moon. She lived by
it and for it.

There were no more accidents to the clockwork after the first one was
repaired. It ran on regularly, year after year.

Alma and Azilda were married and went away to live, one on the South
Shore, the other at Quebec. Nataline was her father's right-hand man. As
the rheumatism took hold of him and lamed his shoulders and wrists, more
and more of the work fell upon her. She was proud of it.

At last it came to pass, one day in January, that Baptiste died. He was
not gathered to his fathers, for they were buried far away beside the
Montmorenci, and on the rocky coast of Brittany. But the men dug through
the snow behind the tiny chapel at Dead Men's Point, and made a grave
for Baptiste Fortin, and the young priest of the mission read the
funeral service over it.

It went without saying that Nataline was to be the keeper of the light,
at