"Ahoy! Aho-o-oy the light!"
The cry was shattered against the singing gale. But the lightkeeper made out the direction from which it came and started down the road toward Lower Trillion. In the other direction were the summer residences of certain wealthy citizens on the Clay Head. While beyond lay Clinkerport at the head of the bay, the entrance to which the lighthouse guarded.
Tobias announced his coming by a hearty hail. He saw a muffled glow in the snow pall ahead. Then the outlines of a low-hung motor car that was quite evidently stalled in a drift.
"Hey!" he demanded. "What you doing in that contraption out in this storm? Ain't you got no sense?"
"Now don't you begin!" rejoined a complaining voice, and a rather stalky figure appeared in the half-shrouded radiance of the headlights. "I've been told already what I am and where I get off. It isn't my fault that blame thing got stalled."
"It is your fault that we came this way from Harbor Bar," interposed a very sweet but at present very sharp voice. ("Jest like cranberry sarse," Tobias secretly commented.) "We should not have taken the shore road."
"You didn't say so when we started," declared the tall young man, indignantly.
"I was not driving the car. You insisted on doing that," chimed the tart voice instantly.
"One would think you expected me to be omniscient."
"Well, you appear to be omnipresent—you are always in the way," and a much shorter figure, muffled in furs, and quite evidently that of a young woman, appeared beside the taller individual from the stalled car.