Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/336

326 stay with them; "that is," she added, "if you think you can sleep with the water swash, swash, swashing in your ears. 'T was years before I ever could learn to sleep here; and there 's times now when I don't sleep for whole nights together."

Joe thought he could sleep in spite of the water, and with the greatest alacrity sent his boatman back to town for his valise.

"After all," said the citizens, on hearing this, "after all he was only some relation of the Bennets." But when day after day passed, and he did not return, the town began again to speculate as to his purposes. Some fishermen going or coming, had seen him walking on the rocks with Tilly; and very soon a rumor took to itself wings and went up and down the town, that the one-armed soldier was "courting Tilly Bennet."

The seclusion of the light-house had its advantages now,—very little could the Provincetown gossips know of what went on among those distant rocks. Very safe were Joe and Tilly in the nooks which they explored in the long bright afternoons. How strangely changed seemed the lonely spot to Tilly! Each rod of the wave-washed beach was transformed as she paced it with Joe by her side. No word of love-making did Joe say—not because it was not warm and ready in his heart, but he was afraid.

"Of course she can't care anything about me, all