The mile or more of shore skirting the curve of Keyport harbor from Keyport Village to Captain Joe’s cottage was lighted by only four street lamps. Three of these were hung on widely scattered telegraph-poles; the fourth was nailed fast to one end of old Captain Potts’s fish-house.

When the nights were moonless, these faithful sentinels, with eyes alert, scanned the winding road, or so much of it as their lances could protect, watching over deep culverts, and in one place guarded a treacherous bridge without a rail.

When the nights were cloudy and the lantern-panes were dimmed by the driving sleet, these beacons confined their efforts to pointing out for the stumbling wayfarer the deep puddles or the higher rows of soggy seaweed washed up by the last high tide into the highway itself. Only on thick nights, when the fog-drift stole in from the still sea, and even Keyport Light burned dim, did their scouting rays retreat discomfited, illumining nothing but the poles on which the lanterns hung.

Yet in spite of this vigilance there were still long stretches of road between, which even on clear nights were dark as graveyards and as lonesome. Except for the ruddy gleam slanted across the path from some cabin window, or the glare of a belated villager’s swinging lantern flecking the pale, staring fences with seesawing lights and shadows, not a light was visible.

Betty knew every foot of this road. She had trundled her hoop on it, her hair flying in the wind, when she first came to Keyport to school. She had trodden it many a time with Caleb; had idled along its curves with Lacey before the day when her life came to an end, and had plodded over it many a weary hour since, as she went to her work in the village or returned to Captain Joe’s. Every stone and tree and turn were familiar to her, and she could have found her way in the pitch-dark to the captain’s or to Caleb’s, just as she had done again and again in the days before the street lights were set, or when Caleb would be standing on the porch, if she were late, shading his eyes and peering down the road, the kitchen lamp in his hand. “I was gittin’ worrited, little woman; what kep’ ye?” he would say. She had never been afraid in those days, no matter what the hour. Everybody knew her. “Oh, that’s you, Mis’ West, is it? I kind o’ mistrusted it was,” would come from some shadowy figure across the road.

All this was changed for her now. There were places along the highway that made her draw her shawl closer, often half hiding her face. She would shudder as she turned the corner by the church, the one where the captain and Aunty Bell had taken her the first Sunday after her coming back. The big, gloomy oil warehouse where she had nursed Lacey seemed to her haunted and uncanny, and at night more gloomy than ever without a ray of light in any one of its broken, staring windows. Even the fishing-smacks, anchored out of harm’s way for the night, looked gruesome and mysterious, with single lights aloft, and black hulls and masts reflected in the water. It was never until she reached the willows that her agitation disappeared. These grew just opposite Captain Potts’s fish-house. There were three of them, and their branches interlocked and spread across the road, the spaces between the trunks being black at night, despite the one street lamp nailed to the fish-house across the way. When Betty gained these trees her breath always came freer. She could then see along the whole road, away past Captain Joe’s, and up the hill. She could see, too, Caleb’s cabin from this spot, and the lamp burning in the kitchen window. She knew who was sitting beside it. From these willows, also, she could run for Captain Joe’s swinging gate with its big ball and chain, getting safely inside before Caleb could pass and see her, if by any chance he should be on the road and coming to the village. Once she had met him this side of their dark shadows. It was on a Saturday, and he was walking into the village, his basket on his arm. He was going for his Sunday supplies, no doubt. The Ledge gang must have come in sooner than usual, for it was early twilight. She had seen him coming a long way off, and had looked about for some means of escape. There was no mistaking his figure. She would know him as far as she could see him,—that strong, broad figure, with the awkward, stiff walk peculiar to so many seafaring men, particularly lightship-keepers like Caleb, who have walked but little. She knew, too, the outline of the big, fluffy beard that the wind caught and blew over his ruddy face. No one could be like her Caleb but himself.

These chance meetings she dreaded with a fear she could not overcome. On this last occasion, finding no concealing shelter, she had kept on, her eyes on the ground. When Caleb had passed, his blue eyes staring straight ahead, his face drawn and white, the lips pressed close, she turned and looked after him, and he turned, too, and looked after her,—these two, man and wife, within reach of each other’s arms and lips, yet with only the longing hunger of a dead happiness in their eyes. She could have run toward him, and knelt down in the road, and begged him to forgive her and take her home again, had not Captain Joe’s words restrained her: “Caleb says he ain’t got nothin’ agin ye, child, but he won’t take ye back s’ long ’s he lives.”

Because, then, of the dread of these chance meetings, and because of the shy looks of many of the villagers, who, despite Captain Joe’s daily fight, still passed her with but a slight nod of recognition, she was less unhappy when she walked the road at night than in the daylight. The chance of being recognized was less. Caleb might pass her in the dark and not see her, and then, too, there were fewer people passing after dark.

On the Saturday night succeeding that on which they had met and looked at each other, she determined to wait until it was quite dark. He would have come in then, and she could slip out from the shop where she worked and gain the shore road before he had finished making his purchases in the village.

Her heart had been very heavy all day. The night before she had left her own bed and tapped at Aunty Bell’s door, and had crept under the coverlid beside the little woman, the captain being at the Ledge, and had had one of her hearty cries, sobbing on the elder woman’s neck, her arms about her, her cheek to hers. She had gone over with her for the hundredth time all the misery of her position, wondering what would become of her; and how hard it was for Caleb to do all his work alone,—washing his clothes and cooking his meals just as he had done on board the lightship; pouring out her heart until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. All of her thoughts were centred in him and his troubles. She longed to go back to Caleb to take care of him. It was no longer to be taken care of, but to care for him.

As she hurried through the streets, after leaving the shop, and gained the corner leading to the shore road, she glanced up and down, fearing to see the sturdy figure with the basket. But there was no one in sight whom she knew. At this discovery she slackened her steps and looked around more quietly. When she reached the bend in the road, a flash of light from an open door in a cabin near by gave her a momentary glimpse of a housewife bending over a stove and a man putting a dinner-pail on the kitchen table. Then all was dark again. It was but a momentary glimpse of a happiness the possibility of which in her own life she had wrecked, but it sent the blood tingling to her face. She stopped, steadying herself by the stone wall, then she walked on.

When she passed into the black shadows of the overhanging willows, a man stepped from behind a tree-trunk.

“Aren’t you rather late this evening?” he asked.

Betty stood still, the light of the street lamp full on her face. The abruptness of the sound startled her.

“Oh, you needn’t be afraid; I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl peered into the gloom. She thought the voice was familiar, though she was not sure. She could distinguish only a shadowy face.

“What makes you so skittish, anyhow?” the man asked again,—in a lower tone this time. “You didn’t use to be so. I thought maybe you might like to drive over to Medford and see the show to-night.”

Betty made no answer, but she took a step nearer to him, trying to identify him. She was not afraid; only curious. Then all at once it occurred to her that it could be for no good purpose he had stopped her. None of the men had spoken to her in the street, even in the daytime, since her return home.

“Please let me pass,” she said quietly and firmly.

“Oh, you needn’t be in a hurry. We’ve got all night. Come along, now, won’t you? You used to like me once, before you shook the old man.”

Betty knew him now!

The terror of her position overcame her; a deathly faintness seized her.

She saw it all; she knew why this man dared. She realized the loneliness and desolation of her position, poor child that she was. Every cabin near her filled with warmth and cheer and comfort, and she friendless and alone! Not a woman near but had the strong arm of husband or brother to help and defend her. The very boats in the harbor, with their beacon-lights aloft, protected and safe. Only she in danger; only she unguarded, waylaid, open to insult, even by a man like this.

She stood shivering, looking into his cowardly face. Then rousing herself to her peril, she sprang toward the road. In an instant the man had seized her wrist. She felt his hot breath on her face.

“Oh, come now, none of that! Say, why ain’t I as good as Bill Lacey? Give me a kiss.”

“Let me go! Let me go! How dare you!” she cried, struggling in his grasp. When she found his strength gaining on her, she screamed.

Hardly had she made her outcry, when from behind the fish-house a man with a flowing beard darted into the shadows, flung himself on Betty’s assailant, and dragged him out under the glare of the street lamp. The girl fled up the road without looking behind.

“That’s what ye’re up to, is it, Mr. Carleton?” said the man, holding the other with the grip of a steel vise. “I ’spected as much when I see ye passin’ my place. Damn ye! If it warn’t that it would be worse for her, I’d kill ye!”

Every muscle in the speaker’s body was tense with anger. Carleton’s head was bent back, his face livid from the pressure of his assailant’s fingers twisted about his throat.

The man slowly relaxed his hold. “Ain’t she got trouble ’nough without havin’ a skunk like you a-runnin’ foul o’ her?”

Carleton made a quick gesture as if to spring aside and run. The diver saw the movement and stepped in front of him.

“Ain’t ye ashamed o’ yerself? Ain’t it mean o’ ye to make up to a gal like Betty?” His voice was low and measured.

“What’s it your business, anyhow?” Carleton gasped between his breaths, shaking himself like a tousled dog. “What are you putting on frills about her for, anyhow? She’s nothing to you, if she is your wife. I guess I know what I’m doing.”

Caleb’s fingers grew hard and rigid as claws.

“So do I know what ye’re a-doin’. Ye’d drag that child down an’ stomp on her, if ye could. Ye’d make a thing of her,”—the words came with a hiss,—“you—you—callin’ yerself a man!”

“Why don’t you take care of her, then?” snarled Carleton, with an assumed air of composure, as he adjusted his collar and cuffs.

“That’s what I’m here for; that’s why I follered ye; there ain’t a night since it begun to git dark I ain’t watched her home. She’s not yourn; she’s mine. Look at me,”—Caleb stepped closer and raised his clinched fist. “If ever ye speak to her agin, so help me God, I will kill ye!”

With one swing of his arm he threw the superintendent out of his way, and strode up the street.

Carleton staggered from the blow, and would have fallen but for the wall of the fish-house. For a moment he stood in the road looking after Caleb’s retreating figure. Then, with a forced bravado in his voice, he called out in the darkness, “If you think so damn much of her, why don’t you take her home?” and slunk away toward the village.

The old man did not turn. If he heard, he made no sign. He walked on, with his head down, his eyes on the road. As he passed Captain Joe’s he loitered at the gate until he saw the light flash up in Betty’s bedroom; then he kept on to his own cabin.