There was a considerable interval during which neither of the pair spoke.  Seth, open-mouthed and horror-stricken, was incapable of speech, and the inventor’s astonishment seemed to be coupled with a certain nervousness, almost as if he feared a physical assault.  However, as the lightkeeper made no move, and his fists remained open, the nervousness disappeared, and Bennie D. characteristically took command of the situation.

“Hum!” he observed musingly.  “Hum!  May I ask what you are doing here?”

“Huh—­hey?” was Seth’s incoherent reply.

“I ask what you are doing here?  Have you followed me?”

“Fol-follered you?  No.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?”

“Yes, I be.”  Seth did not ask what Bennie D. was doing there.  Already that question was settled in his mind.  The brother-in-law had found out that Emeline was living next door to the man she married, that her summer engagement was over, and he had come to take her away.

“Well?” queried the inventor sharply, “if you haven’t followed me, what are you doing here?  What do you mean by being here?”

“I belong here,” desperately.  “I work here.”

“You do?  And may I ask what particular being is fortunate enough to employ you?”

“I’m keeper down to the lighthouses, if you want to know.  But I cal’late you know it already.”

Bennie D.’s coolness was not proof against this.  He started.

“The lighthouses?” he repeated.  “The—­what is it they call them?—­the Twin-Lights?”

“Yes.  You know it; what’s the use of askin’ fool questions?”

The inventor had not known it—­until that moment, and he took time to consider before making another remark.  His sister-in-law was employed as housekeeper at some bungalow or other situated in close proximity to the Twin-Lights; that he had discovered since his arrival on the morning train.  Prior to that he had known only that she was in Eastboro for the summer.  Before that he had not been particularly interested in her location.  Since the day, two years past, when, having decided that he had used her and her rapidly depleting supply of cash as long as was safe or convenient, he had unceremoniously left her and gone to New York to live upon money supplied by a credulous city gentleman, whom his smooth tongue had interested in his “inventions,” he had not taken the trouble even to write to Emeline.  But within the present month the New Yorker’s credulity and his “loans” had ceased to be material assets.  Then Bennie D., face to face with the need of funds, remembered his sister and the promise given his dead brother that he should be provided with a home as long as she had one.