“You needn’t send it.  I couldn’t think of putting you to further trouble.”

“Trouble!  ’Tain’t no trouble to telephone.  Land sakes, I do it four or five times a day.  Now who’ll I send it to?”

“You needn’t send it.”

“Oh, well, of course, if you’d ruther send it yourself—­”

“I sha’n’t send it.  It really isn’t worth while ’phoning or telegraphing either.  I didn’t drown, and I’m very comfortable, thank you—­or should be if it weren’t for these mosquitoes.”

“Comf’table!  Yes, you’re comf’table, but how about your folks?  Won’t they learn, soon’s that steamer gets into—­into Portland—­or—­or—­New York or Boston—­or . . .  Hey?”

“I didn’t speak.”

Seth swallowed hard and continued.  “Well, wherever she was bound,” he snapped.  “Won’t they learn that you sot sail in her and never got there?  Then they’ll know that you must have fell overboard.”

John Brown drew a mouthful of smoke through the stem of the pipe and blew it spitefully among the mosquitoes.

“I don’t see how they’ll learn it,” he replied.

“Why, the steamer folks’ll wire em right off.”

“They’ll have to find them first.”

“That’ll be easy enough.  There’ll be your name, ‘John Brown,’ of such and such a place, written right on the purser’s book, won’t it.”

“No,” drawled Mr. Brown, “it won’t.”

The lightkeeper felt very much as if this particular road to the truth had ended suddenly in a blind alley.  He pulled viciously at his chin whiskers.  His companion shifted his position on the bench.  Silence fell again, as much silence as the mosquitoes would permit.

Suddenly Brown seemed to reach a determination.

“Atkins,” he said briskly, and with considerable bitterness in his tone, “don’t you worry about my people.  They don’t know where I am, and—­well, some of them, at least, don’t care.  Maybe I’m a rolling stone—­at any rate, I haven’t gathered any moss, any financial moss.  I’m broke.  I haven’t any friends, any that I wish to remember; I haven’t any job.  I am what you might call down and out.  If I had drowned when I fell overboard last night, it might have been a good thing—­or it might not.  We won’t argue the question, because just now I’m ready to take either side.  But let’s talk about yourself.  You’re lightkeeper here?”

“I be, yes.”

“And these particular lights seem to be a good way from everywhere and everybody.”

“Five mile from Eastboro Center, sixteen from Denboro, and two from the nighest life savin’ station.  Why?”

“Oh, just for instance.  No neighbors, you said?”

“Nary one.”

“I noticed a bungalow just across the brook here.  It seems to be shut up.  Who owns it?”