Neither toil nor illness, rain, snow or tempest had
in all the years prevented Sarah Libbie from being at her post at
twilight, there to watch for the gleam of Jack's lantern, whose rays
she answered with the light from her own. Even when fogs obscured the
Bar so that the distant headland was cut off from view, Sarah Libbie
would go through the little ceremony and after it was over return to
her knitting with a quiet gladness, although the presence of the other
factor in the drama was a mere matter of conjecture.
Thus the romance had drifted on, and Jack Nickerson now faced his
fiftieth year and was no nearer bringing the love story to a
culmination than he had been when as a boy in his teens he had gazed
into Sarah Libbie's blue eyes and registered the vows he had never yet
dared utter. Nevertheless lonely and disappointed as was Sarah Libbie,
Jack was a thousand times more miserable. To-night, especially, as he
tramped the coast in the teeth of the gale, he thought of Willie
Spence's ridicule and one of his periodic moods of self-abasement came
upon him.
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