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The lightkeeper stood watch in the tower at night. During most of the day he slept; but, after the first week was over, and his trust in his helper became more firm, he developed the habit of rising at two in the afternoon, eating a breakfast or dinner, or whatever the meal might be called and wandering off along the crooked road leading south and in the direction of Pounddug Slough.
Owing to the tremendous tide Pounddug Slough was now merely a continuation of the Harbor and almost as wide. The lightkeeper began to think that he must have miscalculated his distance. He could not have rowed as far as he thought. Therefore, he again turned the dory's nose into the teeth of the wind and pulled steadily on. At intervals he stopped and listened.
Brown would not have gained at all, but for the fact that the horse, from long habit, kept to the roadway and never tried short cuts. His pursuer did, and, therefore, just as Joshua entered the grove on the bluff above Pounddug Slough, Brown caught up with him and made a grab at the end of the trailing halter. He missed it, and the horse took a fresh start.
Then Pounddug Slough was kept thoroughly dredged and buoyed. Now it was weed-grown and neglected. Only an occasional lobsterman's dory traversed its winding ways, which the storms and tides of each succeeding winter rendered more difficult to navigate.
A path led down from the lighthouses to a bend in the "Crick," and there, on a small wharf, was a shanty where Seth kept his spare lobster and eel-pots, dory sails, nets, and the like. The dory itself, with the oars in her, was moored in the cove. A mile off, to the south, the line of bluffs was broken by another inlet, the entrance to Pounddug Slough.
Neither the lightkeeper nor his helper ever saw him again, and when Seth next visited the store and solicitously inquired concerning the pup's health, Henry G. merely looked foolish and changed the subject. But the dog's short sojourn at the Twin-Lights had served to solve one mystery, that of Atkins's daily excursions to Pounddug Slough.
The rain, driven by the northeast wind, came off the water in blinding gusts, and the waves in the harbor were tipped with white. Also, although the tide was almost at its lowest, streaks of seaweed across the road showed where it had reached that forenoon, and prophesied even a greater flood that night. He turned his head and gazed up the harbor to where it narrowed and became Pounddug Slough.
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