In the course of a walk inland we made a new acquaintance, Captain Lant, whom we had noticed at church, and who sometimes joined the company on the wharf.  We had been walking through the woods, and coming out to his fields we went on to the house for some water.  There was no one at home but the captain, who told us cheerfully that he should be pleased to serve us, though his women-folks had gone off to a funeral, the other side of the P’int.  He brought out a pitcherful of milk, and after we had drunk some, we all sat down together in the shade.  The captain brought an old flag-bottomed chair from the woodhouse, and sat down facing Kate and me, with an air of certainty that he was going to hear something new and make some desirable new acquaintances, and also that he could tell something it would be worth our while to hear.  He looked more and more like a well-to-do old English sparrow, and chippered faster and faster.

“Queer ye should know I’m a sailor so quick; why, I’ve been a-farming it this twenty years; have to go down to the shore and take a day’s fishing every hand’s turn, though, to keep the old hulk clear of barnacles.  There!  I do wish I lived nigher the shore, where I could see the folks I know, and talk about what’s been a-goin’ on.  You don’t know anything about it, you don’t; but it’s tryin’ to a man to be called ’old Cap’n Lant,’ and, so to speak, be forgot when there’s anything stirring, and be called gran’ther by clumsy creatur’s goin’ on fifty and sixty, who can’t do no more work to-day than I can; an’ then the women-folks keeps a-tellin’ me to be keerful and not fall, and as how I’m too old to go out fishing; and when they want to be soft-spoken, they say as how they don’t see as I fail, and how wonderful I keep my hearin’.  I never did want to farm it, but ‘she’ always took it to heart when I was off on a v’y’ge, and this farm and some consider’ble means beside come to her from her brother, and they all sot to and give me no peace of mind till I sold out my share of the Ann Eliza and come ashore for good.  I did keep an eighth of the Pactolus, and I was ship’s husband for a long spell, but she never was heard from on her last voyage to Singapore.  I was the lonesomest man, when I first come ashore, that ever you see.  Well, you are master hands to walk, if you come way up from the Brandon house.  I wish the women was at home.  Know Miss Brandon?  Why, yes; and I remember all her brothers and sisters, and her father and mother.  I can see ’em now coming into meeting, proud as Lucifer and straight as a mast, every one of ’em.  Miss Katharine, she always had her butter from this very farm.  Some of the folks used to go down every Saturday, and my wife, she’s been in the house a hundred times, I s’pose.  So you are Hathaway Brandon’s grand-daughter?” (to Kate); “why, he and I have been out fishing together many’s the time,—­he and Chantrey, his next younger brother.  Henry, he was a disapp’intment; he went to furrin parts and turned out a Catholic priest, I s’pose you’ve heard?  I never was so set ag’in Mr. Henry as some folks was.  He was the pleasantest spoken of the whole on ’em.  You do look like the Brandons; you really favor ’em consider’ble.  Well, I’m pleased to see ye, I’m sure.”