A LIGHTHOUSE-KEEPER 157 



mist ; and then for an interval of half an hour subside into medi- 

 tative silence. The process seemed greatly to relieve his sor- 

 rowful mind. This good man told me a little tale of the signal 

 gun at the light on Bad Rock. It ran that a few years before 

 the report came from passing ships that the light was not lit. 

 After some months a vessel was sent there to see what it meant. 

 They found the decayed bodies of the keeper and his assistant, 

 the only folk on the isle, lying beside the bursted gun. 



The keeper at the central lighthouse was a very interesting 

 fellow. Of nigh half a hundred of his peculiar trade I have 

 known, all worth knowing, he was the most interesting. Like 

 the next in note, a certain Jack Peacock of a later stage in this 

 story, he was London born and bred, but above the working 

 grade ; in fact, he was an educated man who had books and had 

 ranged in them and outside of them pretty far. Moreover, after 

 the manner of the better variety of lighthouse-keepers, he was 

 a merry fellow. His first inquiry of me was for news concerning 

 the Franco-Italian-Austrian war of 1859, of which he had known 

 only the beginning. He listened to my account of the campaign 

 attentively, asked keen questions to bring out the value of the 

 famous " Quadrilateral/' seemed concerned that Venice had not 

 been given to Italy; all of which showed me that this strangely 

 secluded man had had a history. When I began to tell him of 

 the Civil War in "the States," he at once politely stopped me, 

 saying that for certain reasons he had been interested in the 

 war he had asked me about, but he desired to hear of no others. 

 He turned the conversation to the question of the food for his 

 cows, which he had brought upon the island and needed to pro- 

 vide with some kind of forage, as the hay imported with them 

 a year or so before was nearly gone. 



This man's place was an admirable hermitage. There was a 

 large family, a servant or two, and a number of children; a 

 flower and kitchen garden, and over all a grace which told that 

 the man was not of the common lot. Among the children was 

 one, I think a little girl, who he said was a descendant of Thomas 



