reminder that Eastboro's ambitious young men no longer got their living
alongshore. The town itself had gone to sleep, awakening only in the
summer, when the few cottagers came and the Bay Side Hotel was opened
for its short season.

Behind the lighthouse buildings, to the west--and in the direction
of the village--were five miles of nothing in particular. A desolate
wilderness of rolling sand-dunes, beach grass, huckleberry and bayberry
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 borders dwelt no human
being; but life was there, life in abundance. Ezra Payne, late assistant
keeper at the Twin-Lights, was ready at all times to furnish evidence
concerning the existence of this life.

"My godfreys domino!" Ezra had exclaimed, after returning from a drive
to Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et
me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the
world like a sheep, 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 million or so flew in and choked me.
That's what I said--a million. Some moskeeters are fat, but these don't
get a square meal often enough to be anything but hide-racks filled with
cussedness. Moskeeters! My godfreys domino!"

Ezra was no longer assistant lightkeeper. He and his superior had
quarreled two days before. The quarrel was the culmination, on Ezra's
part, of a gradually developing "grouch" brought on by the loneliness of
his surroundings. After a night of duty he had marched into the house,