feet were coming up. "Quite an accident
down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ashore in the
blow and broke all up into kindling-wood in less than no time. Captain
Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight."

"I knowed it," sighed Mrs. Davids. "I heard a rushing sound sometime
about the break of day that waked me out of a sound sleep, and I knowed
then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids
went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time."

"Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night," said Captain Ben; "for
as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain
Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet
blankets asleep behind the life-boat house. He said he felt like he
could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the
lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure
enough."

"Oh, then it couldn't have been them, I was warned of!" returned Mrs.
Davids, looking as though she regretted it. "It was right over my head,
and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past. You haven't heard,
have you," she continued, "whether or no there was any other damage
done by the gale?"

"I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly," returned
Captain Ben; "but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went
home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our
coast blows, and off she trapsed."

Mrs. Davids sighed like November. "So you have some hard luck as well as
myself. I don't suppose you can _get_ a housekeeper to keep her long,"
said she, dismally.

"Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than
housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain
Ben, smiling grimly.

Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down
her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and
turned her eyes modestly out of the window.

"I am _so_. But the difficulty is, who will it be? There are so many to
select from it is fairly bothersome," continued Captain Ben, winking
fast and looking as though he was made of dry corncobs and hay.

Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly. "The land alive!" she
ejaculated with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their
shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. "It makes me mad as a March hare
to hear men go on as though all they'd got t