Dawn came at last, clutching at the window with wan fingers. The pale light grew slowly. Lorna heard Tobias rattling the stove-hole covers as he built the kitchen fire. Then the odor of coffee reached her nostrils, and Miss Heppy awoke.
CHAPTER IV
PROPHECIES
Lorna appeared in the lighthouse kitchen with red eyelids and the bruised look about her eyes that usually advertises the lack of sleep in the case of all dark-eyed people. But she smiled and thanked Miss Heppy and Tobias briskly for their kindness.
"I am sure I do not know what I should have done if you had not taken me in. Did the storm do much damage in your best chamber, Miss Heppy?"
"I ain't had time to see, child," replied the spinster. "Tobias will have to get a new winder frame, I cal'late. You got it boarded up tight, Tobias?"
"Tight's the word," her brother assured her.
"I hope nothing has happened to our house on Clay Head," Lorna said.
"Not likely. Them storm shutters and doors Miss Ida insisted on putting on are a good thing, I allow," the lightkeeper observed.
"We'd ought to have outside blinds to our lower windows," his sister complained. "But the Government don't think so."