laid.

Pride had helped chance to bring him here, to the very spot where
Lizzie Pezzack lived. He met her daily, and several times a day.
She, and his mother and grandmother, were all the women-folk in the
hamlet--if three cottages deserve that name. In the first cottage
Lizzie lived with her father, who was chief light-houseman, and her
crippled child; two under-keepers, unmarried men, managed together in
the second; and this accident allowed Taffy to rent the third from
the Brethren of the Trinity House and live close to his daily work.
Unless brought by business, no one visited that windy peninsula; no
one passed within sight of it; no tree grew upon it or could be seen
from it. At daybreak Taffy's workmen came trudging along the track
where the short turf and gentians grew between the wheel-ruts; and in
the evening went trudging back, the level sun flashing on their empty
dinner-cans. The eight souls left behind had one common gospel--
Cleanliness. Very little dust found its way thither; but the salt,
spray-laden air kept them constantly polishing window-panes and
brass-work. To wash, to scour, to polish, grew into the one
absorbing business of life. They had no gossip; even in their own
dwellings they spoke but little; their speech shrank and dwindled
away in the continuous roar of the sea. But from morning to night,
mechanically, they washed and scoured and polished. Paper was not
whiter than the deal table and dresser which Humility scrubbed daily
with soap and water, and once a week with lemon-juice as well.
Never was cleaner linen to sight and smell than that which she pegged
out by the furze-brake on the ridge. All the life of the small
colony, though lonely, grew wholesome as it was simple of purpose in
cottages thus sweetened and kept sweet by limewash and the salt wind.

And through it moved the forlorn figure of Lizzie Pezzack's child.
Somehow Lizzie had taught the boy to walk, with the help of a crutch,
as early as most children; but the wind made cruel sport with his
first efforts in the open, knocking the crutch from under him at
every third step, and laying him flat. The child had pluck, however;
and when autumn came round again, could face a fairly stiff breeze.

It was about this time that word came of the Trinity Board's
intention to replace the old lighthouse with one upon the outer rock.
For the Chief Engineer had visited it and decided that Taffy was
right. To be sure no mention