CHAPTER I.
RILLA

“Here yo’, Shags! What yo’ got thar, ol’ dog? Haul it out! Like it’s a treasure from a ship that’s gone down. Ahoy, thar, Shagsie! Here comes a crashin’ big wave. Whoo! Wa’n’t that-un a tarnal whopper? An’ yo’ lost yer treasure, sure sartin! Sharp ahead now, ol’ dog, d’y see it anywhar?”

The wind-blown girl and the big shaggy dog stood side by side on the narrow, pebbly strip of beach and gazed intently at the whirling, seething water where a breaker of unusual size had crashed high, sending these two for a moment scrambling up the rocks.

Back of them towered an almost perpendicular cliff, on top of which stood the Windy Island Lighthouse, severe in outline, but glaring red and white in color that it might be readily observed in the daytime by pilots who were strangers in those dangerous waters.

Many a shoal there was under the tossing, turbulent waves, unsuspected by the unwary mariner, and, in the heavy fogs that often hung like wet, impenetrable blankets over that part of the New England coast, many a vessel would have crashed to its destruction had it not been for the faithful Captain Ezra Bassett, who had been keeper of the light since Rilla was a baby.

The dog’s sight must have been keener than that of the girl, for a moment later he dashed away up the narrow strip of beach and began to bark furiously at some object that was tossing on an incoming wave. The girl raced after him, her hazel eyes glowing with excitement, her long brown hair, with a glint of red in it, unfastened, flying back of her.

“’Tain’t the same thing, Shagsie!” she shouted to her companion. “’Tain’t what yo’ was tryin’ to fetch ashore down below by the rocks. This-un is more like a box or suthin!”

The eager expression in the girl’s big, starlike eyes changed to one of concern and anxiety.

“Shags,” she cried, “thar’s been a wreck, that’s sure sartin, but ’twa’n’t hereabouts, ’pears like.” She shaded her eyes with one hand, and gazed searchingly out toward the horizon, but in another moment her eager interest returned to the box. “Look, yo’ ol’ dog. It’s ridin’ high. We’ll get it, yo’ see if we don’t. Yi-hi! Here she comes. Heave ahead now, Shagsie!”

The dog raced around, barking wildly, but the barefooted girl plunged deep into the seething foam, caught a banded box of foreign appearance and held on with all her strength while the undertow tried to drag her treasure away, but the wave receded and the box was left high.

“We got it, ol’ Shags. We got it!” she cried triumphantly, tossing back her sun-shimmered hair, for, when she had stooped, it had fallen about her face. This hindered the freedom of her movements, and so, snatching up a wet green ribbon of seaweed, she tied her hair back with it. Another wave was rushing, roaring shoreward. One quick seaward glance told her that it was going to be the biggest one yet.

Could she get the box high enough to be out of reach of that next breaker? How she tugged! But her efforts were fruitless, for with a deafening thud the wave crashed over her, lifting the box to which she still clung and hurling them both farther up the beach.

The girl was drenched but exultant and miraculously unhurt.

“We’ve got it now, sure sartin, Shags, ol’ dog.” Flushed and breathless, she sank down on the banded box for a moment to rest, but the dog, sniffing at it, barked his excitement.

“Yo’d like to know what’s in it, would yo’?” queried the laughing girl. “Well, sir, so would I, but like as not we’d better get it into Treasure Cave ’fore we open it, like as not we’d better.”

As the girl spoke she glanced up at the lighthouse, towering above her.

“Grand-dad’s still asleep, I reckon, but ’twa’n’t be long now afore he’s wakin’, so we’d better heave to and hist her.”

Rilla had found a leather handle on one end of the box, and holding fast to this, slowly and with great effort she began dragging it up the rocks and about half an hour later, as a reward for her perseverence, she disappeared with it into a small opening in the cliff, and not a moment too soon, for a stentorian voice, high above her, called, “Rilly gal, where be yo’? Don’ yo’ know as it’s past time for mess?”

“Yeah, Grand-dad. We was just a-comin’,” Which was the truth, for having safely hidden the box in her Treasure Cave, the girl had suddenly thought that she must go at once and prepare her grandfather’s evening meal.

“Shagsie,” she confided, “ol’ dog, we’ll have to wait over till tomorrer to know what’s in it. We’ll come an’ look as soon as its sun-up. Yo-o! How I hope it’s suthin’ wonderful!”

When Muriel Storm entered the kitchen of the small house adjoining the light, her grandfather gazed at her keenly from under his shaggy grey brows. “A severe, unforgiving man,” some folks called him, but he hadn’t looked long at the darling of his heart before his expression changed, softened until those grey eyes that had often struck terror to an offending deckhand shone with a light that was infinitely tender.

“Well, Rilly gal, fust mate of the Lighthouse Craft, I cal’late ye’ve been workin’ purty hard this past hour doin’ nothin’. ’Pears like yer purty het up lookin’.”

The girl made no reply, though she laughed over her shoulder at the old man, who, with his cap pushed back, sat by the stove in his wooden armchair, smoking his corncob pipe in solid comfort.

This was the hour that he liked best, when his gal was cooking his evening meal and chattering to him of this and that – inconsequential things – telling him how the lame pelican that had been away for a week had returned, but not alone, for a beautiful pelican that wasn’t lame at all had been with him, or, when she wasn’t chattering, she was singing meeting-house songs in her sweet untrained voice while she fried the fish and potatoes, but tonight the old captain noted that the girl was unusually silent, that her cheeks were almost feverishly red, and there was a sudden clutching dread in his heart. Just so had the other Rilly, this girl’s mother, looked and acted the day before she ran away and married the young man from the city. The eyes under the shaggy grey brows were hard again, and Rilla, noting in the face of the grand-dad she so loved the expression she dreaded, ran to him, fork in hand and pressing her cheek against his forehead, she cried:

“Oh, Grand-dad, what set yo’ thinkin’ o’ that? Yo’ know I wouldn’t be leavin’ yo’. I love yo’, Grand-dad; I’ll allays, allays stay, an’ be yer fust mate.”

“Clear to the end of the v’yage? Take an oath to it, Rilly?”

It might have seemed ludicrous to an onlooker, but there was no one to see as the girl, with an earnest, almost inspired expression on her truly beautiful face, stood up and lifting her hand, seemingly unconscious that it held a fork, said in a voice ringing with sincerity, “I call God to witness that I’ll never go away from yo’, Grand-dad, without yer permittin’ it.”

Then there was one of those sudden changes that made Rilla so irresistable. “Grand-dad,” she cried, teasingly, as she stooped and looked with laughing eyes directly into the grey ones that were softening again, “I’m only sixteen, come next month, and why ’tis yo’ worry so ’bout my marryin’, sartin is puzzlin’. I don’t even know a boy ’ceptin’ Mrs. Sol Dexter’s Buddy, and he’s not as high as one of the barrels in his ma’s store.”

“Yer heavin’ oil on troubled waters, and the sea’s smoothin’ down,” the old captain said as he drew his chair up to the table and took up his knife and fork preparatory to eating the good supper that Rilla had placed before him. But, instead of beginning, he remarked: “I can’t figger out why I keep thinkin’ of city fellers this week past. They don’t any of ’em come to Tunkett at this time o’ the year. That thar summer hotel at the pint is closed as tight as a clam that can’t be opened without smashin’ it, an’ so are the cottages, as the rich folks call them gray shanties they loaf around in every summer, so I figger yer ol’ grand-dad must be gettin’ hallucinations.”

When the supper dishes had been washed and put away, Rilla found her grandfather sitting just outside the door smoking his beloved corncob pipe and watching the sunset. She went out and sat on a wooden stool at his feet. Rilla loved to sit quietly with folded hands while the glow was fading in the west and dream dreams. Just as the last flush was paling the old man rose.

“Time to put the light on, Rilly gal,” he said.

She heard his heavy steps climbing the spiral stairs. Fainter and fainter they grew, and then, a moment later, just as the first stars glimmered through the dusk, the great light flashed over the sea and began slowly turning, for the lighthouse was on an island one mile from shore, and the waters all about it were illumined.

For a moment Rilla saw a fishing boat that was nearly becalmed and would have trouble reaching port that night.

“It’s ol’ Cap’n Barney, like’s not. He’s allays late gettin’ in.”

The girl rose and went indoors. Shags, who had been lying silently at her feet, accompanied her. “Good-night, Grand-dad,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss the old man, who stood erect in spite of his many years.

Then almost shyly she added: “Grand-dad, when I come sixteen yer goin’ to tell me all about it, like yo’ promised, aren’t yo’, Grand-dad?”

A grunt, which could hardly be interpreted in the affirmative, was the only reply, and yet neither had it been negative.

Kissing him again, Rilla went to her snug little room over the kitchen, and Shags followed, for he always slept just outside her closed door.

Rilla did not light the kerosene lamp that stood on the small table. The moon was rising and she liked its light best. For a moment she stood at the open window, facing the town, which in the fall and winter was so dark and quiet in the evening, but in summer, when the city people were in their cabins on the point, it was pulsing with life, color and music. Rilla never visited the town in summer. She was then practically a prisoner on the small rocky island. For a long time she stood watching the waves that lifted silvery crests in the moonlight. “I wonder who my dad was,” she thought, as she had many times before. “I wonder why he never came for me, after my girl-mother died.” Forgotten was the box in Treasure Cave.

Many had been the moods of Rilla that day, but when she had undressed in the moonlight she knelt, not by the bedside, but facing the window. Looking up toward the peaceful, starry sky, she whispered softly, “God in Heaven, bless my grand-dad, and – and my father – who never came for me. Amen.”

Soon she was asleep, little dreaming that the next day was to bring into her hitherto quiet and uneventful life her first real adventure.