"Who has mentioned it?"
Thomas mentioned the fisherman he had recently confronted and rebuked.
Then he added,--
"I have tried to run the story down to its hole. It don't seem to start
with him, for he says somebody told him, and--"
"Who is that?"
"Timothy Waters."
"Indeed!"
"Now, I want to know how to stop the story."
"You let me think it over, Thomas. I am much obliged to you."
"I am real sorry to tell you," replied Thomas, "but I thought you ought
to know of it, and I'll stand by you and Toby to--the last."
This conversation was only three days before Dave's visit to Pudding
Point. Thomas had said if anything new turned up he would report to
Dave. "Nothing," he had said to Dave during that call at the
fish-house, looking significantly at him.
"I understand," replied Dave, "and I have nothing. All I can do is to
grin and bear it."
To suit the act to the sentiment, he gave a smile with compressed lips.
It was a rather grim smile.
Dave was thinking of the unpleasant subject continually. What added to
his burden was the conviction that he did not think it would be wise to
tell his principal, for he suspected--and he judged rightly--that it
would do no good, that it would only grieve the light-keeper, and that
this burden of grief he was not just then in a condition to easily
carry.
"I am acting for two," he said to himself, "and that makes it all the
harder. If it were just one, just myself, I could seem to tell what to
do; but I think it would do an injury to the old man to tell him now;
and what shall I do? I guess I must take the advice of that psalm to
myself."
He had in mind the close of the twenty-seventh psalm, read the night
before: "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen
thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And this was Dave's comment on
the verse: "I can rest on that promise. I was not aware when a man
didn't know what to do, which way to turn, that this psalm could help
and rest one like that."
So Dave, like many pilgrims perplexed and tired, came to the shadow of
the mountain-promises of God. and there comforted his soul in the
assurance that God thought of him, loved him, and would strengthen him.
He needed this comfort when he returned to the lighthouse, after his
visit to Thomas Trafton's fish-house, and missed the keeper.
"I will go upstairs to find him," he said.
How hard and heavy was the sound of his footsteps as he ascended the
first flight of stairs leading from the kitchen! Dave went up as if he
were carrying a burden. He pushed open the door at the head of the
stairway and looked into the keeper's room, anxiously and yet timidly,
as if desirous to find him and yet afraid.
"Ah, there he is," thought Dave.
He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed.
"Is he asleep?" wondered Dave. He stepped to the bed.
"Yes, he must be asleep. Shall I speak to him?"
He hesitated. He wanted to wake him and make sure that an ugly
suspicion was without foundation.
He watched the old man's breast, and saw a movement there as of a
pulsation of the heart. He held his hand before the keeper's mouth.
"Yes, I feel his warm breath. It must be sleep, and yet--"
He paused. He did not like to express in language what he could not
help in thought.
"I will not disturb him," he finally said, "for it may be only just
sleep. I will wait, any way, till after dinner."
Deferring and still suspecting, he went downstairs. The kitchen had not
changed, and yet it seemed a different place. The clock and the fire
now made discordant noises. The sunshine that fell through the window
and rested on the floor seemed not so much to bring the light as to show
how empty and comfortless the place was. He felt lonelier than ever,
this man that people outside suspected of theft, who was cut off from
the sympathy of the man suspected with him. He was like one of the
ledges in the sea, so isolated, so much by itself, upon which the waves
beat without mercy, without rest. In that hour what society, sympathy,
strength, he found in the psalms!--a face to smile upon him, a voice to
cheer, and a hand to uplift.