LIFE IN THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 267 



evening, for the month that she had lived at the Key, found her 

 in the same spot dreaming away the twilight, and when it was 

 dark brightening the eyes of the passing mariners with the ex- 

 pectant flash of the lantern. 



The spits of sand that ran up and down along the coast were 

 margined with little rollers that broke in foam along their seaward 

 side, and then fell back to renew the attempt, while doe-witches 

 and sand-pipers with nimble tread pursued them back and forth. 

 The blue line of the horizon, where it cut the roseate sky, was 

 marked by the sail of a ship, that Lou was watching. She was 

 conning over her past few years of life. Figures came up to her 

 misty eyes, dead friends, and other homes, strong men, and patches 

 of wood, and camp-fires, and old longings. There were tears in 

 her eyes, and her foot ceased to tap the iron step, and she leaned 

 more over her arm and looked harder out to sea. Then appeared 

 her lonely life, and the wild imaginings and romances it had 

 created, and her form straightened again. Her short lip curled, 

 and the tears dried up. 



She thought of her kinsfolk in the States, and how with 

 haughtiness she had thrown back their proffers of assistance. She 

 thought of her own active life, her self-educated tastes, her superi- 

 ority to her sex of the same age, not boastingly, but proudly and 

 justly. Old dreams of romance came over her, dreams that had 

 been dreamt and re-dreamt, and had awakened old fancies of a 

 desperate, whole-souled love, proud as her own, that was to meet 

 her own and make surrender — that was to woo, plead, strive, 

 and die for her, and be accepted. She thought of Mike, and in 

 the daring mood she was, the patient, gentle, watchful hunter 

 was swept away with a rush of scorn. Too timid or care- 

 less to plead for her, too simple for an ideal, his love was the 

 likings of a man, but no love for such as her. A man that she 

 couldn't understand at times, a man that was too cautious to 

 praise, too weak to dare anything for her, even a refusal — out on 

 such a man ! The consciousness of a secret liking that had made 

 her leave Mike so hastily at Bonda Key when he had proffered 

 the cat-skin, made her pride revolt and her scorning the bitterer. 

 Then she was too proud to let him come nearer her because she 



