successful in proving John Brown faithful over a few things and,
therefore, in time, to be intrusted with many and more important ones.

Brown, on his part, liked Seth. He had professed to like him during the
conversation at the breakfast table which resulted in his remaining at
the lights, but then he was not entirely serious. He was, of course,
grateful for the kindness shown him by the odd longshoreman and enjoyed
the latter's society and droll remarks as he would have enjoyed anything
out of the ordinary and quaintly amusing. But now he really liked
the man. Seth Atkins was a countryman, and a marked contrast to any
individual Brown had ever met, but he was far from being a fool. He
possessed a fund of dry common sense, and his comments on people and
happenings in the world--a knowledge of which he derived from the
newspapers and magazines obtained on his trips to Eastboro--were a
constant delight. And, more than all, he respected his companion's
desire to remain a mystery. Brown decided that Atkins was, as he had
jokingly called him, a man with a past. What that past might be, he did
not know or try to learn. "Mind your own business," Seth had declared to
be the motto of Eastboro Twin-Lights, and that motto suited both parties
to the agreement.

The lightkeeper stood watch in the tower at night. During most of the
day he slept; but, after the first week was over, and his trust in his
helper became more firm, he developed the habit of rising at two in the
afternoon, eating a breakfast--or dinner, or whatever the meal might be
called--and wandering off along the crooked road leading south and in
the direction of Pounddug Slough. The road, little used and grass grown,
twisted and turned amid the dunes until it disappeared in a distant
grove of scrub oaks and pitch pines. Each afternoon--except on Sundays
and on the occasions of his excursions to the village--Atkins would rise