"Wal, ye might. If Heppy was only up and about she'd give me a hand."
"I can help you just as well as Miss Heppy," Lorna declared with confidence.
She followed the old man up the spiral stairway with lighter tread. The higher they went the louder in Lorna's ears sounded the pæan of the gale. The tower trembled through all its height. The thunder of the breakers down below was, too, a threatening sound.
They reached the lamp room. The wind seemed to burst against the glassed front of the room. There was such a creaking and rattling of joints and of window frames that Lorna was actually frightened. She cowered for a moment at the back of the room, her hands over her eyes. If Ralph was out in this awful storm!
"Here ye be, Lorny!" shouted the lightkeeper. "See if you can give me a hand."
She ventured forward. At first she scarcely dared look out across the sea. The spectacle of lowering masses of cloud with the white scud flying beneath and the foaming billows racing landward shook the girl's very soul. The drum-beat of the breakers at the foot of the tower seemed to menace it.
"Oh! aren't we in danger up here?" she cried.
"I cal'late the old Light will stand some pounding yet," Tobias grimly replied.
She read the words on his lips rather than heard them. She dragged her attention from the view without to the work of repair that Tobias was engaged in. The pressure of her hand above and below the point on the broad flange where he was tapping was just the aid needed.
"That's it, Lorny. You're as good at a pinch as ary boy. If we can keep this sheet of glass from shaking out of the frame——"