eclared to Miss Kate, coolly. "I haven't got to stay here, you know."

"But where will you go? what will you do?" demanded that young lady,
severely. "You say the captain of the schooner and his wife are nothing
to you?"

"I should say not!" exclaimed Nita. "They were nice and kind to me,
though."

"And you can't go away until you have something decent to wear," added
Heavy's aunt. "That's the first thing to 'tend to."

And although it was a bright and beautiful morning after the gale, and
there were a dozen things the girls were all eager to see, they spent the
forenoon in trying to make up an outfit for Nita so that she would be
presentable. The boys went off with Mr. Stone's boatkeeper in the motor
launch and Mary Cox was quite cross because the other girls would not
leave Miss Kate to fix up Nita the best she could, so that they could
all accompany the boys. But in the afternoon the buckboard was brought
around and they drove to the lighthouse.

Nita, even in her nondescript garments, was really a pretty girl. No
awkwardness of apparel could hide the fact that she had nice features and
that her body was strong and lithe. She moved about with a freedom that
the other girls did not possess. Even Ruth was not so athletic as the
strange girl. And yet she seemed to know nothing at all about the games
and the exercises which were commonplace to the girls from Briarwood Hall.

There was a patch of wind-blown, stunted trees and bushes covering
several acres of the narrowing point, before the driving road along
the ridge brought the visitors to Sokennet Light. While they were driving
through this a man suddenly bobbed up beside the way and the driver
hailed him.

"Hullo, you Crab!" he said. "Found anything 'long shore from that
wreck?"

The man stood up straight and the girls thought him a very horrid-looking
object. He had a great beard and his hair was dark and long.

"He's a bad one for looks; ain't he, Miss?" asked the driver of Ruth,
who sat beside him.

"He isn't very attractive," she returned.

"Ha! I guess not. And Crab's as bad as he looks, which is saying a
good deal. He comes of the 'wreckers.' Before there was a light here,
or life saving stations along this coast, there was folks lived along
here that made their livin' out of poor sailors wrecked out there on
the reefs. Some said they used to toll vessels onto the rocks with false
lights. Anyhow, Crab's father, and his gran'ther, was wreckers. He's