-keeper's kind invitation.

Peggy's first action, however, was to hasten to the 'phone in the
lighthouse and call up their aunt. Miss Prescott, who had been badly
worried over their prolonged absence, was much relieved to learn that
they were safe and sound.

Mrs. Beasley, a motherly woman of middle age, took charge of Peggy while
Jeff Stokes entertained Roy. Jeff said that he liked the life at the
light, lonesome as it grew sometimes. When he felt blue he used to
relieve the monotony by talking, by means of invisible waves, with other
operators. He wiled many a weary hour away in this manner, he said.

Suddenly, in the midst of their talk, he excused himself and hastened to
the small room in which his instruments were. The place, filled with
shiny, mysterious apparatus and networked above with wires, was as neat
as a pin.

"Some one's calling," Jeff explained.

His quick ear had caught the faint "tick-tick" hardly audible to the
untrained ears, which told him that a message was vibrating through the
night. Slipping over his head a metallic apparatus, not unlike the
telephone receivers worn by "Central," Jeff began listening intently.
Drawing a pad toward him, he was soon writing down the message as it was
ticked off. Presently it was completed, by which time Peggy was one of
his audience.

"'Steamer Valiant, Captain Briggs, of London, wishes to be reported as
passing Rocky Point, bound for Boston,'" read off Jeff. "Hum--nothing
very exciting there."

"What are you going to do now?" asked Peggy, as Jeff, the message in his
hand, turned to another table, one on which were arranged some ordinary
telegraph instruments.

"Send it by ordinary wire telegraphy into the head office in New York,"
he said.

"Why not send it by wireless?" asked Peggy.

"Too much chance of delay and getting cross currents," explained Jeff.
"We found that for quick transmission of ordinary business, that the wire
is best, unless the atmospheric conditions are just right."

Suddenly, one of the telegraph instruments began to crackle and click
loudly.

"Phew!" said Jeff, listening intently; "here's something that will
interest you folks."

"What is it?" asked Peggy, eagerly.

"It's--wait a minute till I catch the last----" Jeff listened a few
seconds more and then faced about. "Why, that message was a despatch from
the Sandy Bay correspondent of the New York Planet to his paper," he
said. "It was an article telling that Fanning Hard