low, wind-swept building which Heavy told the girls
was the life saving station.

"We'll have lots of fun down there. Cap'n Abinadab Cope is just
the nicest old man you ever saw!" declared Heavy. "And he can tell the
most thrilling stories of wrecks along the coast. And there's the
station 'day book' that records everything they do, from the number of
pounds of coal and gallons of kerosene used each day, to how they save
whole shiploads of people----"

"Let's ask him to save a shipload for our especial benefit," laughed
Madge. "I suppose there's only one wreck in fifteen or twenty years,
hereabout."

"Nothing of the kind! Sometimes there are a dozen in one winter. And
lots of times the surfmen go off in a boat and save ships from being
wrecked. In a fog, you know. Ships get lost in a fog sometimes, just
as folks get lost in a forest----"

"Or in a blizzard," cried Helen, with a lively remembrance of their
last winter's experience at Snow Camp.

"Nothing like that will happen here, you know," said Ruth, laughing.
"Heavy promised that we shouldn't be lost in a snowstorm at Lighthouse
Point."

"But hear the sea roar!" murmured Mary Cox. "Oh! look at the waves!"

They had now come to where they could see the surf breaking over a
ledge, or reef, off the shore some half-mile. The breakers piled up as
high--seemingly--as a tall house; and when they burst upon the rock
they completely hid it for the time.

"Did you ever see such a sight!" cried Madge. "'The sea in its
might'!"

The gusts of rain came more plentifully as they rode on, and so rough
did the wind become, the girls were rather glad when the wagons drove in
at the gateway of the Stone place.

Immediately around the house the owner had coaxed some grass to grow--at
an expense, so Jennie said, of about "a dollar a blade." But everywhere
else was the sand--cream-colored, yellow, gray and drab, or slate where
the water washed over it and left it glistening.

The entrance was at the rear; the bungalow faced the cove, standing on a
ridge which--as has been before said--continued far out to the lighthouse.

"And a woman keeps the light. Her husband kept it for many, many years;
but he died a year ago and the government has continued her as keeper.
She's a nice old lady, is Mother Purling, and she can tell stories, too,
that will make your hair curl!"

"I'm going over there right away," declared Mary, who had begun to
be her old self again. "Mine is as strai