at with them in my hands for as much as an hour, I
guess, staring at the oil-tank and its lopsided shadow on the wall. I
tell you, sir, I was shocked. I was only twenty-two remember, and I was
shocked and horrified.

And when I did turn in, finally, I didn't sleep at all well. Two or
three times I came to, sitting straight up in bed. Once I got up and
opened the outer door to have a look. The water was like glass, dim,
without a breath of wind, and the moon just going down. Over on the
black shore I made out two lights in a village, like a pair of eyes
watching. Lonely? My, yes! Lonely and nervous. I had a horror of her,
sir. The dinghy-boat hung on its davits just there in front of the door,
and for a minute I had an awful hankering to climb into it, lower away,
and row off, no matter where. It sounds foolish.

Well, it seemed foolish next morning, with the sun shining and
everything as usual--Fedderson sucking his pen and wagging his head over
his eternal "log," and his wife down in the rocker with her head in the
newspaper, and her breakfast work still waiting. I guess that jarred it
out of me more than anything else--sight of her slouched down there,
with her stringy, yellow hair and her dusty apron and the pale back of
her neck, reading the Society Notes. _Society Notes_! Think of it! For
the first time since I came to Seven Brothers I wanted to laugh.

I guess I did laugh when I went aloft to clean the lamp and found
everything so free and breezy, gulls flying high and little whitecaps
making under a westerly. It was like feeling a big load dropped off your
shoulders. Fedderson came up with his dust-rag and cocked his head at
me.

"What's the matter, Ray?" said he.

"Nothing," said I. And then I couldn't help it. "Seems kind of out of
place for society notes," said I, "out here at Seven Brothers."

He was the other side of the lens, and when he looked at me he had a
thousand eyes, all sober. For a minute I thought he was going on
dusting, but then he came out and sat down on a sill.

"Sometimes," said he, "I get to thinking it may be a mite dull for her
out here. She's pretty young, Ray. Not much more'n a girl, hardly."

"Not much more'n a _girl!_" It gave me a turn, sir, as though I'd seen
my aunt in short dresses.

"It's a good home for her, though," he went on slow. "I've seen a lot
worse ashore, Ray. Of course if I could get a shore light----"

"Kingdom Come's a shore light."

He looked at me out