sunny land, as so many of them die; the sun, with all his good will
and with all his shining, not being able to undo in three months the
work of long years of the snows and bleak east winds of New England.

The lady dead, and her poor thin frame sent northward again to lie in
the hillside churchyard by the side of bleak Puritan ancestors, Melvyna
looked about her. She hated the lazy tropical land, and had packed her
calf-skin trunk to go, when Pedro Gonsalvez surprised her by proposing
matrimony. At least that is what she wrote to her aunt Clemanthy, away
in Vermont; and, although Pedro may not have used the words, he at least
meant the fact, for they were married two weeks later by a justice of
the peace, whom Melvyna's sharp eyes had unearthed, she of course
deeming the padre of the little parish and one or two attendant priests
as so much dust to be trampled energetically under her shoes, Protestant
and number six and a half double-soled mediums. The justice of the
peace, a good-natured old gentleman who had forgotten that he held the
office at all, since there was no demand for justice and the peace was
never broken, married them as well as he could in a surprised sort of
way; and, instead of receiving a fee, gave one, which Melvyna, however,
promptly rescued from the bridegroom's willing hand, and returned with
the remark that there was no "call for alms" (pronounced as if rhymed
with hams), and that two shilling, or mebbe three, she guessed, would be
about right for the job. This sum she deposited on the table, and then
took leave, walking off with a quick, enterprising step, followed by her
acquiescent and admiring bridegroom. He had remained acquiescent and
admiring ever since, and now, as lighthouse-keeper on Pelican Island, he
admired and acquiesced more than ever; while Melvyna kept the house in
order, cooked his dinners, and tended his light, which, although only
third-class, shone and glittered under her daily care in the old square
tower which was founded by the Spaniards, heightened by the English, and
now finished and owned by the United States, whose Lighthouse Board said
to each other every now and then that really they must put a first-class
Fresnel on Pelican Island and a good substantial tower instead of that
old-fashioned beacon. They did so a year or two later; and a hideous
barber's pole it remains to the present day. But when Carrington and
Keith landed there the square tower still stood in its gr