the roof.

"I reckon you gents think this is a queer kind of a craft," said the
man, with a grin of pleasure at our evident curiosity; "and if ye think
that, ye are about right, for there isn't jist such another one as far
as I know. This is a floating grocery, and I am captain of the sloop or
keeper of the store, jist as it happens. In that house there is a good
stock of flour, sugar, feed, trimmings, notions, and small dry goods,
with some tinware and pottery, and a lot of other things which you
commonly find in a country grocery store. I have got the trade of about
half the families in this bay; all of them on the islands, and a good
many of them on the mainland, especially sech as has piers of their own.
I have regular days for touching at all the different p'ints; and it is
a mighty nice thing, I can tell ye, to have yer grocery store come round
to ye instead of yer having to go to it, especially if ye live on an
island or out in the country."

Walkirk and I were very much interested in this floating grocery store,
which was an entirely novel thing to us, and we asked a good many
questions about it.

"There's only me and Abner aboard," said the grocer-skipper, "but that's
enough, for we do a good deal more anchorin' than sailin'. Abner, he's
head clerk, and don't pretend to be no sailor at all; but he lays a hold
of anythin' I tell him to, and that's all I ask of him in the sailorin'
line. But he is first class behind the counter, I can tell ye, and in
keepin' the books I couldn't find nobody like Abner,--not in this State.
Now it may strike ye, gents, that I am not much of a sailor neither, to
be driftin' about here at night in this fog instead of anchorin' and
tootin' a foghorn; but ye see, I did anchor in the fore part of the
night, and after Abner had gone to his bunk--we don't keep regular
watches, but kinder divide the night between us, when we are out on the
bay, which isn't common, for we like to tie up at night, and do our
sailin' in the daytime--it struck me that as the tide was runnin' out we
might as well let it take us to Simpson's Bar, which, if ye don't know
this bay, is a big shallow place, where there is always water enough for
us, bein' a good deal on the flat-bottomed order, but where almost any
steamin' craft at low tide would stick in the mud before they could run
into us. So thinks I, If we want to get on in the direction of Widder
Kinley's (whose is the last house I serve down the bay), an