vernment will pay. Or if not, I will pay, moi-meme."

There was no response. All the men hung back. The lighthouse was still
unpopular, or at least it was on trial. Fortin's pluck and resolution
had undoubtedly impressed them a little. But they still hesitated to
commit themselves to his side.

"B'en," he said, "there is no one. Then we shall manage the affair en
famille. Bon soir, messieurs!"

He walked down to the beach with his head in the air, without looking
back. But before he had his canoe in the water he heard some one running
down behind him. It was Thibault's youngest son, Marcel, a well-grown
boy of sixteen, very much out of breath with running and shyness.

"Monsieur Fortin," he stammered, "will you--do you think--am I big
enough?"

Baptiste looked him in the face for a moment. Then his eyes twinkled.

"Certain," he answered, "you are bigger than your father. But what will
he say to this?"

"He says," blurted out Marcel--"well, he says that he will say nothing
if I do not ask him."

So the little Marcel was enlisted in the crew on the island. For thirty
nights those six people--a man, and a boy, and four women (Nataline was
not going to submit to any distinctions on the score of age, you may be
sure)--for a full month they turned their flashing lantern by hand from
dusk to day-break.

The fog, the frost, the hail, the snow beleaguered their tower. Hunger
and cold, sleeplessness and weariness, pain and discouragement, held
rendezvous in that dismal, cramped little room. Many a night Nataline's
fife of fun played a feeble, wheezy note. But it played. And the crank
went round. And every bit of glass in the lantern was as clear as
polished crystal. And the big lamp was full of oil. And the great eye
of the friendly giant winked without ceasing, through fierce storm and
placid moonlight.

When the tenth of December came, the light went to sleep for the winter,
and the keepers took their way across the ice to the mainland. They had
won the battle, not only on the island, fighting against the elements,
but also at Dead Men's Point, against public opinion. The inhabitants
began to understand that the lighthouse meant something--a law, an
order, a principle.

Men cannot help feeling respect for a thing when they see others willing
to fight or to suffer for it.

When the time arrived to kindle the light again in the spring, Fortin
could have had any one that he wanted to help him. But no; he chose the