第56章

It was not a desperate vigil like that affair with the broken clockwork eight years before.There was no weary turning of the crank.There was just enough work to do about the house and the tower to keep them busy.The weather was fair.The worst thing was the short supply of food.But though they were hungry, they were not starving.And Nataline still played the fife.She jested, she sang, she told long fairy stories while they sat in the kitchen.

Marcel admitted that it was not at all a bad arrangement.

But his thoughts turned very often to the arrival of the supply-boat.He hoped it would not be late.The ice was well broken up already and driven far out into the gulf.The boat ought to be able to run down the shore in good time.

One evening as Nataline came down from her sleep she saw Marcel coming up the rocks dragging a young seal behind him.

"Hurra!" he shouted, "here is plenty of meat.I shot it out at the end of the island, about an hour ago."But Nataline said that they did not need the seal.There was still food enough in the larder.On shore there must be greater need.

Marcel must take the seal over to the mainland that night and leave it on the beach near the priest's house.He grumbled a little, but he did it.

That was on the twenty-third of April.The clear sky held for three days longer, calm, bright, halcyon weather.On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh the clouds came down from the north, not a long furious tempest, but a brief, sharp storm, with considerable wind and a whirling, blinding fall of April snow.It was a bad night for boats at sea, confusing, bewildering, a night when the lighthouse had to do its best.Nataline was in the tower all night, tending the lamp, watching the clockwork.Once it seemed to her that the lantern was so covered with snow that light could not shine through.

She got her long brush and scraped the snow away.It was cold work, but she gloried in it.The bright eye of the tower, winking, winking steadily through the storm seemed to be the sign of her power in the world.It was hers.She kept it shining.

When morning came the wind was still blowing fitfully off shore, but the snow had almost ceased.Nataline stopped the clockwork, and was just climbing up into the lantern to put out the lamp, when Marcel's voice hailed her.

"Come down, Nataline, come down quick.Make haste!"She turned and hurried out, not knowing what was to come; perhaps a message of trouble from the mainland, perhaps a new assault on the lighthouse.

As she came out of the tower, her brown eyes heavy from the night-watch, her dark face pale from the cold, she saw Marcel standing on the rocky knoll beside the house and pointing shoreward.

She ran up beside him and looked.There, in the deep water between the island and the point, lay the supply-boat, rocking quietly on the waves.

It flashed upon her in a moment what it meant--the end of her fight, relief for the village, victory! And the light that had guided the little ship safe through the stormy night into the harbour was hers.

She turned and looked up at the lamp, still burning.

"I kept you!" she cried.

Then she turned to Marcel; the colour rose quickly in her cheeks, the light sparkled in her eyes; she smiled, and held out both her hands, whispering, "Now you shall keep me!"There was a fine wedding on the last day of April, and from that time the island took its new name,--the Isle of the Wise Virgin.

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