94 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



About eight o'clock I was seated on the iron 

 steps at the foot of the great kerosene torch 

 which, stands inside the crumpled lenses of the 

 Highland light. The lamp roared in its giant 

 chimney. Prismatic colors swam through the 

 lenses. The keepers told strange stories of 

 storms, freaks of lightning, the trembling of their 

 white tower in the gales, and the fate of birds 

 which hurled themselves against the heavy glass 

 of the outer windows of the tower. The base of 

 the lantern and many parts of the interior and 

 exterior of the lighthouse are scarred by light- 

 ning. Once three ducks struck and shivered 

 into splinters one of the thick panes of glass in 

 the tower and fell dead and mangled at the foot 

 of the lantern. The keeper said the sound of 

 their striking was like the report of a gun. Out- 

 side those windows, flashing with light, all seemed 

 intense darkness, a gloom filled perhaps with 

 fluttering birds or the mingled thoughts of those 

 upon the ocean who watched from afar the great 

 white light of the Truro sands. 



At sunrise on the morning of the second of 

 April, I stood shivering in the chilly air, under 

 the lee of a wrecked windmill not far from the 

 lighthouse. The windmill has lost its wings, 

 and storms have beaten holes in its sides. Half 

 buried in the sand and sod lies one of its grooved 

 mill-stones. Half of the other forms the front 



