“Oh, baby boy; my little Morley, what a wild fellow you are!” cried the mother, catching up her child and tossing him in the air.
The old man had approached near enough to overhear the words and recognise the face. Tears sprang to his eyes and ran down his cheeks, as he fell forward on the path with his face in the dust.
At the same moment the lighthouse-keeper issued from the door of the building. Running towards the old man, he and his wife quickly raised him and loosened his neckcloth. His face had been slightly cut by the fall. Blood and dust besmeared it and soiled his white locks.
“Poor old man!” said the keeper, as his mate, the assistant light-keeper, joined him. “Lend a hand, Billy, to carry him in. He ain’t very heavy.”
The assistant—a strapping young fellow, with a powerful, well-made frame, sparkling eyes and a handsome face, on which at that moment there was a look of intense pity—assisted his comrade to raise the old man. They carried him with tender care into the lighthouse and laid him on a couch which at that time, owing to lack of room in the building, happened to be little Nora’s bed.
For a few moments he lay apparently in a state of insensibility, while the mother of the family brought a basin of water and began carefully to remove the blood and dust which rendered his face unrecognisable. The first touch of the cold sponge caused him to open his eyes and gaze earnestly in the woman’s face—so earnestly that she was constrained to pause and return the gaze inquiringly.
“You seem to know me,” she said.
The old man made no reply, but, slowly clasping his hands and closing his eyes, exclaimed “Thank God!” fervently.
Let us glance, now, at a few more of the changes which had been wrought in the condition and circumstances of several of the actors in this tale by the wonder-working hand of time.