his third girl, Nataline, was born,
he went so far as to paint the house red, and put on a kitchen, and
enclose a bit of ground for a yard. This marked him as a radical, an
innovator. It was expected that he would defend the building of the
lighthouse. And he did.

"Monsieur Thibault," he said, "you talk well, but you talk too late. It
is of a past age, your talk. A new time comes to the Cote Nord. We
begin to civilize ourselves. To hold back against the light would be
our shame. Tell me this, Marcel Thibault, what men are they that love
darkness?"

"TORRIEUX!" growled Thibault, "that is a little strong. You say my deeds
are evil?"

"No, no," answered Fortin; "I say not that, my friend, but I say this
lighthouse means good: good for us, and good for all who come to this
coast. It will bring more trade to us. It will bring a boat with the
mail, with newspapers, perhaps once, perhaps twice a month, all through
the summer. It will bring us into the great world. To lose that for the
sake of a few birds--CA SERA B'EN DE VALEUR! Besides, it is impossible.
The lighthouse is coming, certain."

Fortin was right, of course. But Thibault's position was not altogether
unnatural, nor unfamiliar. All over the world, for the past hundred
years, people have been kicking against the sharpness of the pricks that
drove them forward out of the old life, the wild life, the free life,
grown dear to them because it was so easy. There has been a terrible
interference with bird-nesting and other things. All over the world the
great Something that bridges rivers, and tunnels mountains, and fells
forests, and populates deserts, and opens up the hidden corners of the
earth, has been pushing steadily on; and the people who like things
to remain as they are have had to give up a great deal. There was no
exception made in favour of Dead Men's Point. The Isle of Birds lay in
the line of progress. The lighthouse arrived.

It was a very good house for that day. The keeper's dwelling had three
rooms and was solidly built. The tower was thirty feet high. The lantern
held a revolving light, with a four-wick Fresnel lamp, burning sperm
oil. There was one of Stevenson's new cages of dioptric prisms around
the flame, and once every minute it was turned by clockwork, flashing a
broad belt of radiance fifteen miles across the sea. All night long that
big bright eye was opening and shutting. "BAGUETTE!" said Thibault, "it
winks like a one-eyed Windigo."