"I left a note for Mother telling her where I'd gone, Uncle George, so
I'm sure Uncle Martin will come right over as soon as they get home."

"He'll have to hurry. It's blowing up now ... hear it ... and snowing
thick. If your mother and Martin haven't left the Harbour Head before
this, they won't leave it tonight. But, anyhow, the light is lit. I
don't mind my getting smashed up compared to that. I thought I'd go
crazy lying here picturing to myself a vessel out on the reefs."

That night was a very long and anxious one. The storm grew rapidly
worse, and snow and wind howled around the lighthouse. Uncle George
soon grew feverish and delirious, and Mary Margaret, between her
anxiety for him and her dismal thoughts of poor Nellie tied in her
chair over at the Little Dipper, and the dark possibility of her
mother and Uncle Martin being out in the storm, felt almost
distracted. But the morning came at last, as mornings blessedly will,
be the nights never so long and anxious, and it dawned fine and clear
over a white world. Mary Margaret ran to the shore and gazed eagerly
across at the Little Dipper. No smoke was visible from Uncle Martin's
house!

She could not leave Uncle George, who was raving wildly, and yet it
was necessary to obtain assistance somehow. Suddenly she remembered
the distress signal. She must hoist it. How fortunate that Uncle
George had once shown her how!

Ten minutes later there was a commotion over at Harbour Head where the
signal was promptly observed, and very soon--although it seemed long
enough to Mary Margaret--a boat came sailing over to the Big Dipper.
When the men landed they were met by a very white-faced little girl
who gasped out a rather disjointed story of a light that hadn't been
lighted and an uncle with a broken leg and a sister tied in her chair,
and would they please see to Uncle George at once, for she must go
straight over to the other Dipper?

One of the men rowed her over, but before they were halfway there
another boat went sailing across the harbour, and Mary Margaret saw a
woman and two men land from it and hurry up to the house.

That is Mother and Uncle Martin, but who can the other man be?
wondered Mary Margaret.

When she reached the cottage her mother and Uncle Martin were reading
her note, and Nellie, just untied from the chair where she had been
found fast asleep, was in the arms of a great, big, brown, bewhiskered
man. Mary Margaret just gave one look at th