ter we stood before a white door in a very white
little house. Mr. Atwood opened the door, revealing a cosy little
sitting room and a gray-haired, plump, pleasant-faced woman sitting in a
rocking chair beside a table with a lamp upon it.

"Hello, Betsy!" bellowed our rescuer, stamping his wet rubber boots on
the braided mat. "Got company come to supper--or breakfast, or whatever
you want to call it. This is Mr. Paine from Denboro. This is his wife,
Mrs. Paine. They've been cruisin' all the way from Cape Cod to Kamchatky
in a motor boat with no power to it. Don't that beat the Old Scratch,
hey?"

The plump woman rose, without a trace of surprise, as if having company
drop in at three o'clock in the morning was nothing out of the ordinary,
and came over to us, beaming with smiles.

"I'm real glad to see you, Mrs. Paine," she exclaimed. "And your
husband, too. You must be froze to death! Set right down while I fix up
a room for you and hunt up some dry things for you to put on. I won't be
but a minute."

Before I could offer explanations, or do more than stammer thanks,
and rather incoherent ones at that, she had bustled out of the room. I
caught one glimpse of Mabel Colton's face; it was crimson from neck to
brow. "Mrs. Paine!" "Your husband!" I was grateful to the doughty Mr.
Atwood, but just then I should have enjoyed choking him.

The light keeper, quite unaware that his unfortunate misapprehension of
the relationship between his guests might be embarrassing, was doing his
best to make us feel at home.

"Take off your boots, Mr. Paine," he urged. "The old lady'll fetch you
a pair of my slippers and some socks in a minute. She'll make your wife
comf'table, too. She's a great hand at makin' folks comf'table. I tell
her she'd make a cake of ice feel to home on a hot stove. She beats--"

The "old lady" herself interrupted him, entering with a bottle in one
hand and a lamp in the other.

"Joshua!" she said, warningly.

"Well, what is it, Betsy?"

"Be careful how you talk."

"Talk!" with a wink at me. "I wan't goin' to say nothin'."

"Yes, you was. Mrs. Paine, you mustn't mind him. He used to go mate on
a fishin' schooner and, from all I can learn, they use pretty strong
language aboard these boats."

"Pick it up same as a poll parrot," cut in her husband. "Comes natural
when you're handlin' wet trawl line in February. Can't seem to get no
comfort out of anything milder."

"He's a real good-hearted man, Jos