"I understand," replied Dave, "and I have nothing. All I can do is to grin and bear it."
To suit the act to the sentiment, he gave a smile with compressed lips. It was a rather grim smile.
Dave was thinking of the unpleasant subject continually. What added to his burden was the conviction that he did not think it would be wise to tell his principal, for he suspected--and he judged rightly--that it would do no good, that it would only grieve the light-keeper, and that this burden of grief he was not just then in a condition to easily carry.
"I am acting for two," he said to himself, "and that makes it all the harder. If it were just one, just myself, I could seem to tell what to do; but I think it would do an injury to the old man to tell him now; and what shall I do? I guess I must take the advice of that psalm to myself."
He had in mind the close of the twenty-seventh psalm, read the night before: "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And this was Dave's comment on the verse: "I can rest on that promise. I was not aware when a man didn't know what to do, which way to turn, that this psalm could help and rest one like that."
So Dave, like many pilgrims perplexed and tired, came to the shadow of the mountain-promises of God. and there comforted his soul in the assurance that God thought of him, loved him, and would strengthen him. He needed this comfort when he returned to the lighthouse, after his visit to Thomas Trafton's fish-house, and missed the keeper.
"I will go upstairs to find him," he said.
How hard and heavy was the sound of his footsteps as he ascended the first flight of stairs leading from the kitchen! Dave went up as if he were carrying a burden. He pushed open the door at the head of the stairway and looked into the keeper's room, anxiously and yet timidly, as if desirous to find him and yet afraid.
"Ah, there he is," thought Dave.
He was lying on his bed, his eyes closed.