The Woman-Haters

sea, with its tumbling waves, changed color, becoming a light gray, then a faint blue, and, as the red sun rolled up over the edge

great lantern beside him. Morning had come, the mists had rolled away, and the dots scattered along the horizon-schooners, tugs, and coal barges, for the most part-no longer needed the glare of Eastboro Twin-Lights to warn them against close proximity to the dangerous, shoal-bordered

pened the door of the south tower, mounted the stairs there and repeated the extinguishing process with the other lantern. Be

t, a faint breeze rippling the surfaces of the ground-swell. A few sails in sight, far out. Not a sound except the hiss

ngalow about two hundred yards away, separated from the lights by the narrow stream called Clam Creek-Seth always spoke of it as the "Crick"-which, turning in behind the long surf-beaten sandspit known, for some forgotten reason, as "Black Man's Point," continued to the salt-wate

something as a fishing port, the mackerel fleet unloaded its catch at the wharves in the Back Harbor. Then Pounddug Slough was kept thoroughly dredged and buoyed. Now it was weed-grown and neglected. Only an occasional lobsterman's dory traversed its winding ways, which the storms and tides of each succeeding winter rendered more difficult to navigate. The abandoned fish houses

ayberry bushes, cedar swamps, and small clumps of pitch-pines. Through this desert the three or four rutted, crooked sand roads, leading to and from the lights, turned and twisted. Along their borde

p, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth

a's part, of a gradually developing "grouch" brought on by the loneliness of his surroundings. After a night of duty he had marched

ad all the gov'ment jobs I want. Life-savin' service was bad enough, trampin' the condemned beach in a howlin' no'theaster, with the sand cuttin' furrers in your face, and the icicles on your mustache so

st be lonesome all to once. Ain'

you are! When I'm awake yo

my life," was the i

me ain't no name for this place. No company but green flies and them moskeeters, and nothin' to look at but salt water and sand and-and-dummed if I can

been till t

come here every

e such crazy loons as to come

for 'em. There ain't so many moskeeters in winter. But just LOOK at this hole. Just pu

in'. You're too fur from Elsie Peters, that's where the shoe pinches. I've heard how you used to set out in her dad's backyard, with your arm r

n way back in Methusalem's time had sense enough to heave you over. At least, that's what everybody cal'lates must be the reas

when you get to be as old as I be and know as much as I do-though that ain't no ways likely,

at the poorhouse hated ice cream-'cause there ain't none ar

eeper. As the lifter was about to be followed by the teakettle, Ezra took to his heels, bolted from the house and began his long tramp to the village. W

tending both lights, rubbing brass work, sweeping and scouring, sleeping when he could and keeping awake when he must, nobody to talk to, nobody to help-the forty-eight hours of solitude had already convinced Mr. Atkins that the sooner a helper was provided

of his assistant's duties. Now he must prepare it himself, and he was hungry and sleepy. He mentally vowed that he would no lon

ownward toward the beach below. And there he saw something which caused him to forget hunger and grievances of all kinds; something which, after one horrified look to make sure, led him t

, just beyond reach of the wash of the surf, lay a man