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. What a wretched cur he was! How lacking in nerve! Any woman, he muttered to himself, was better off without such a feeble-willed, spineless husband!
The fierce winds and whirling sands that stung his cheeks and buffeted him seemed a merited castigation, a castigation that amounted to a penance. He welcomed their punishment. As he stumbled on through the pitch black of the night, he asked himself what he was going to do. Was he always to go on loving Sarah Libbie and letting her love him and never in manly fashion bring the affair to a climax? If he did not mean to make her his wife, had he the right to stand in the way and prevent her from marrying some one else? The baldness of the question brought him up with a turn, and as he paused breathlessly awaiting his own verdict, his eye was caught by the lantern dangling from his hand. He regarded it with slow wonder as if he had never seen it before. Why had he never thought until now of this method of communication? Not only was it simple and direct, but it also obviated the difficulty that had always been the stumbling-block in his path,--the necessity of confronting Sarah Libbie in the flesh. He grasped the inspiration with zeal. Fate was with him. His watch was up, and he was free to make his way back to the station, if he so willed, and put his remarkable scheme into execution.
Away he sped through the howling tempest.
As he flew up the steps of the lookout tower, he could detect the twinkling lights from his lady's home gemmed against the background of velvet darkness. Perhaps her fluttering little heart was uneasy about her lover, and she was peering out into the gale. However that may be, he had no difficulty in summoning her to the window when he raised his lantern. Then, with the talisman held high, he paused. What should he say? Of course he could send no lengthy message. Even a few words meant a laborious amount of spelling. Perhaps _Will You Marry Me?_ was as simple and direct a way as he could put it. Firmly he gripped the lantern. Then, instead of the customary three flashes, he began the involved liftings, dippings, and circlings which in luminous waves were to spell out his destiny.