for it was growing late, but asked permission to come again and hear the Widow Oliver Pinkham story.  We stopped, however, to see “the women-folks,” and afterward became so intimate with them that we were invited to spend the afternoon and take tea, which invitation we accepted with great pride.  We went out fishing, also, with the captain and “Danny,” of whom I will tell you presently.  I often think of Captain Lant in the winter, for he told Kate once that he “felt master old in winter to what he did in summer.”  He likes reading, fortunately, and we had a letter from him, not long ago, acknowledging the receipt of some books of travel by land and water which we had luckily thought to send him.  He gave the latitude and longitude of Deephaven at the beginning of his letter, and signed himself, “Respectfully yours with esteem, Jacob Lant (condemned as unseaworthy).”

Danny

Deephaven seemed more like one of the lazy little English seaside towns than any other.  It was not in the least American.  There was no excitement about anything; there were no manufactories; nobody seemed in the least hurry.  The only foreigners were a few stranded sailors.  I do not know when a house or a new building of any kind had been built; the men were farmers, or went outward in boats, or inward in fish-wagons, or sometimes mackerel and halibut fishing in schooners for the city markets.  Sometimes a schooner came to one of the wharves to load with hay or firewood; but Deephaven used to be a town of note, rich and busy, as its forsaken warehouses show.

We knew almost all the fisher-people at the shore, even old Dinnett, who lived an apparently desolate life by himself in a hut and was reputed to have been a bloodthirsty pirate in his youth.  He was consequently feared by all the children, and for misdemeanors in his latter days avoided generally.  Kate talked with him awhile one day on the shore, and made him come up with her for a bandage for his hand which she saw he had hurt badly; and the next morning he brought us a “new” lobster apiece,—­fishermen mean that a thing is only not salted when they say it is “fresh.”  We happened to be in the hall, and received him ourselves, and gave him a great piece of tobacco and (unintentionally) the means of drinking our health.  “Bless your pretty hearts!” said he; “may ye be happy, and live long, and get good husbands, and if they ain’t good to you may they die from you!”

None of our friends were more interesting than the fishermen.  The fish-houses, which might be called the business centre of the town, were at a little distance from the old warehouses, farther down the harbor shore, and were ready to fall down in despair.  There were some fishermen who lived near by, but most of them were also farmers in a small way, and lived in the village or farther inland.  From our eastern windows we could see the moorings, and we always liked to watch the boats go out or come straying in, one after the other, ripping and skimming under the square little sails; and we often went down to the fish-houses to see what kind of a catch there had been.