dy out of hearing, and the men whose lives had been
saved did as they had been told, and in the warm kitchen awaited the
coming of their rescuer. In an hour there were footsteps outside, the
door opened, and a glowing girl stepped in out of the bitter gale,
stamping her almost frozen feet and holding out her benumbed hands to
the glowing fire.

"Well, they are all safe on land," she said. "I think they had better
be left in the boat-house overnight. The wind is in the right quarter
for a clear day to-morrow; then you can put out again."

There was no reply. A girl like this keeper of the Lime Rock Light
left no room for pretty compliments, but made a man feel that if she
could do such deeds with simple courage, what could he not do with
such a spirit as hers! No one ever paid Ida Lewis higher praise than
these two rough men when, on leaving, they each gripped her hand and
the spokesman said:

"Whenever I see your light shining, I'll put up a prayer for its
keeper, and thanking you for what you did for us, ma'am--if my little
one's a girl, she will be Ida Lewis!"

Up spoke his comrade: "My daughter's twelve year old come September
next, and I hope she'll be your kind. It'd make a new kind of a world
to have such!"

While such praise did not turn Ida's very level head, or make her
vain, it gave her a deep satisfaction and a tremendous sense of
responsibility in her beloved occupation.

Two years went by, and Ida Lewis was a name which commanded respect
throughout Rhode Island because of her work for the government, and
there was scarcely a day when she did not direct some wandering
boatman or give valuable aid to a distressed seafarer, but from the
day she brought the men and their load of sheep to shore it was a year
before there was any need of such aid as she had given them. Then on a
day never to be forgotten by those to whose rescue she went, she saw
two of the soldiers who were stationed at Fort Adams rowing toward the
fort from Newport. A young lad was at the oars, and he showed that he
was not in any way experienced as a boatman. A sudden squall overtook
the small boat in mid-bay, and, as Ida Lewis looked at it, it
capsized. At the moment Ida happened to be without hat or coat, or
even shoes. Rushing to the boat-house, she took her staunch friend to
the shore, and launched out in the wild squall under an inky-black
sky; and she had to row against a wind that drove her back time after
time. Finally she reac