all run down; folks buys 'em
second-hand nowadays, and you can't make nothing. I can't stand it to
foller deep-sea fishing, and--well, you see what my land's wuth. But my
oldest boy, he's getting ahead. He pushed off this spring, and he works
in a box-shop to Boston; a cousin o' his mother's got him the chance. He
sent me ten dollars a spell ago and his mother a shawl. I don't see how
he done it, but he's smart!"

This seemed to be the only bright spot in their lives, and we admired
the shawl and sat down in the house awhile with the mother, who seemed
kind and patient and tired, and to have great delight in talking about
what one should wear. Kate and I thought and spoke often of these people
afterward, and when one day we met the man in Deephaven we sent some
things to the children and his wife, and begged him to come to the house
whenever he came to town; but we never saw him again, and though we made
many plans for going again to the cove, we never did. At one time the
road was reported impassable, and we put off our second excursion for
this reason and others until just before we left Deephaven, late in
October.

We knew the coast-road would be bad after the fall rains, and we found
that Leander, the eldest of the Dockum boys, had some errand that way,
so he went with us. We enjoyed the drive that morning in spite of the
rough road. The air was warm, and sweet with the smell of
bayberry-bushes and pitch-pines and the delicious saltness of the sea,
which was not far from us all the way. It was a perfect autumn day.
Sometimes we crossed pebble beaches, and then went farther inland,
through woods and up and down steep little hills; over shaky bridges
which crossed narrow salt creeks in the marsh-lands. There was a little
excitement about the drive, and an exhilaration in the air, and we
laughed at jokes forgotten the next minute, and sang, and were jolly
enough. Leander, who had never happened to see us in exactly this
hilarious state of mind before, seemed surprised and interested, and
became unusually talkative, telling us a great many edifying particulars
about the people whose houses we passed, and who owned every wood-lot
along the road. "Do you see that house over on the pi'nt?" he asked. "An
old fellow lives there that's part lost his mind. He had a son who was
drowned off Cod Rock fishing, much as twenty-five years ago, and he's
worn a deep path out to the end of the pi'nt where he goes out every
hand's turn