Brown, on his part, liked Seth. He had professed to like him during the conversation at the breakfast table which resulted in his remaining at the lights, but then he was not entirely serious. He was, of course, grateful for the kindness shown him by the odd longshoreman and enjoyed the latter's society and droll remarks as he would have enjoyed anything out of the ordinary and quaintly amusing. But now he really liked the man. Seth Atkins was a countryman, and a marked contrast to any individual Brown had ever met, but he was far from being a fool. He possessed a fund of dry common sense, and his comments on people and happenings in the world--a knowledge of which he derived from the newspapers and magazines obtained on his trips to Eastboro--were a constant delight. And, more than all, he respected his companion's desire to remain a mystery. Brown decided that Atkins was, as he had jokingly called him, a man with a past. What that past might be, he did not know or try to learn. "Mind your own business," Seth had declared to be the motto of Eastboro Twin-Lights, and that motto suited both parties to the agreement.
The lightkeeper stood watch in the tower at night. During most of the day he slept; but, after the first week was over, and his trust in his helper became more firm, he developed the habit of rising at two in the afternoon, eating a breakfast--or dinner, or whatever the meal might be called--and wandering off along the crooked road leading south and in the direction of Pounddug Slough. The road, little used and grass grown, twisted and turned amid the dunes until it disappeared in a distant grove of scrub oaks and pitch pines.
Each afternoon--except on Sundays and on the occasions of his excursions to the village--Atkins would rise from the table, saunter to the door to look at the weather, and then, without excuse or explanation, start slowly down the road. For the first hundred yards he sauntered, then the saunter became a brisk walk, and when he reached the edge of the grove he was hurrying almost at a dog trot. Sometimes he carried a burden with him, a brown paper parcel brought from Eastboro, a hammer, a saw, or a coil of rope. Once he descended to the boathouse at the foot of the bluff by the inlet and emerged bearing a big bundle of canvas, apparently an old sail; this he arranged, with some difficulty, on his shoulder and stumbled up the slope, past the corner of the house and away toward the grove.
Brown watched him wonderingly. Where was he going, and why? What was the mysterious destination of all these tools and old junk?
Where did Seth spend his afternoons and why, when he returned, did his hands and clothes smell of tar? The substitute assistant was puzzled, but he asked no questions. And Seth volunteered no solution of the puzzle.
Yet the solution came, and in an unexpected way. Seth drove to the village one afternoon and returned with literature, smoking materials and an announcement. The latter he made during supper.
"I tried to buy that fly paper we wanted today," he observed, as a preliminary. "Couldn't get none. All out."
"But will have some in very shortly, I presume," suggested the assistant, who knew the idiosyncrasies of country stores.
"Oh, yes, sartin! Expectin' it every minute. That store's got a consider'ble sight more expectations in it than it has anything else. They're always six months ahead of the season or behind it in that store. When it's so cold that the snow birds get chilblains they'll have the shelves chuck full of fly paper. Now, when it's hotter than a kittle of pepper tea, the bulk of their stock is ice picks and mittens. Bah! However, they're goin' to send the fly paper over when it comes, along with the dog."
"The dog?" repeated Brown in amazement.
"Yup. That's what I was goin' to tell you--about the dog. I ordered a dog today. Didn't pay nothin' for him, you understand.
Henry G., the storekeeper, gave him to me. The boy'll fetch him down when he fetches the fly paper."
"A dog? We're--you're going to keep a dog--here?"
"Sure thing. Why not? Got room enough to keep a whole zoological menagerie if we wanted to, ain't we? Besides, a dog'll be handy to have around. Bill Foster, the life saver, told me that somebody busted into the station henhouse one night a week ago and got away with four of their likeliest pullets. He cal'lates 'twas tramps or boys. We don't keep hens, but there's some stuff in that boathouse I wouldn't want stole, and, bein' as there's no lock on the door, a dog would be a sort of protection, as you might say."
"But thieves would never come way down here."
"Why not? 'Tain't any further away from the rest of creation than the life savin' station, is it? Anyhow, Henry G. give the dog to me free for nothin', and that's a miracle of itself. You'd say so, too, if you knew Henry. I was so surprised that I said I'd take it right off; felt 'twould be flyin' in the face of Providence not to.
A miracle--jumpin' Judas! I never knew Henry to give anybody anything afore--unless 'twas the smallpox, and then 'twan't a genuine case, nothin' but varioloid."
"But what kind of a dog is it?"
"I don't know. Henry used to own the mother of it, and she was one quarter mastiff and the rest assorted varieties. This one he's givin' me ain't a whole dog, you see; just a half-grown pup. The varioloid all over again--hey? Ho, ho! I didn't really take him for sartin, you understand; just on trial. If we like him, we'll keep him, that's all."
The third afternoon following this announcement, Brown was alone in the kitchen, and busy. Seth had departed on one of his mysterious excursions, carrying a coil of rope, a pulley and a gallon can of paint. Before leaving the house he had given his helper some instructions concerning supper.
"Might's well have a lobster tonight," he said. "Ever cook a lobster, did you?"
No, Mr. Brown had never cooked a lobster.
"Well, it's ****** enough. All you've got to do is bile him. Bile him in hot water till he's done."
"I see." The substitute assistant was not enthusiastic. Cooking he did not love.