hardy sailors it contained: a conversation in
which fish was oddly mixed up with politics, but
which was never devoid of interest.

My own official work was light. I can well
imagine that to an uneducated man the lack of
continued occupation would have been maddening.
After all, to burnish a brace of reflectors,
and to trim, fill, and kindle two lamps, made but
scanty inroads on my time. The duty required
steadiness, sobriety, and punctuality; but not
industry. Luckily for me, I had my art wherewith
to while away the long hours of the sultry
summer days; I painted and sketched; I
retouched and altered; and, by dint of gazing on
nature with a loving and humble eye, I really
made some progress as a marine painter. I had
fully made up my mind not to retain my post
above a year at the outside; nor would I have
thought of staying so long but that I wanted to
learn to depict the sea, after the long period of
sunshine and smiles, with a wrathful frown
upon its expanse. A man cannot be always
painting, but I had much ado to find any
other tolerably rational pastime. I polished
the mountings of the telescopes, and even
the brass hilts of the old cutlasses, till they
shone like gold. I cleaned up the old duck
gun, and got it ready for the arrival of the
birds of passage, when the northern snows
should fall. And, finding that I could not, from
the quay or beach, contrive to catch any but the
smallest fish, I seriously set to work to repair
a large old boat belonging to the lighthouse, and
which I found half sunk in a creek not far off.
Lucky it was that I betook myself to this last
task, as the reader shall presently hear.

All this time I saw but little of my neighbours,
the islanders. Curiosity brought me
several visitors during the first months of my
sojourn; but, although I made a point of
receiving their calls as urbanely as possible, no
particular sympathy could exist between them
and myself. It was not that they were rude of
speech and boisterous of manners; nor was it
that I found myself the only educated person
within walking distance. But my amphibious
neighbours had in their demeanour, for the most
part, something that repelled esteem and
discouraged confidence. They seemed sly, with
all their uncouthness, and they would now and
then give utterance to sentiments too lawless
for my taste.

I shall never forget the first visit I paid
to the Brown family. Fruit Creek was a long
and deep, though narrow inlet, which
terminated in a shelving bank, on the smooth sand
of which a number of whale-boats and skiffs
rested, like fish out of water. The creek was
named in consequence of the wreck of a West
Indian vessel, laden with pines and shaddocks,
near the spot where Daddy Brown had
established his long black house of well-calked
timber. There were several huts within sight,
but Mr. Brown's was by far the best and largest
of the tenements; its windows were completely
glazed, and it possessed a tolerable garden,
fenced from spray and sand by a high wall of
solid timber slabs. The inside of the house
was even more comfortable than the exterior
promised. The Browns were evidently well off,
and, as they insisted that I should not leave them
before supper, I had an opportunity of seeing
how they fared in general.

Daddy Brown himself was a hale old fellow,
tall, but much bowed with age, though his
flashing black eyes were as keen as a hawk's,
and evinced great craft and vigour. I was
at first rather disposed to like the old man,
he talked so well and glibly. He alone, of
the family group, had been a traveller; he had
been to China and to Europe, as mate of a vessel,
and had coasted repeatedly along the Atlantic
seaboard, from Vera Cruz to Halifax. There
were three sons, of whom Japhet was the eldest,
and three daughters, all tall and well made, with
dark complexions and bright eyes. Mrs. Brown,
on the other hand, was a soft little woman, with
rather a timid look in her round blue eyes, and
was, as her husband said, from Pennsylvania.
She was a notable housekeeper, and had the
northern taste for scrubbing and polishing,
since the floor was exquisitely clean, and the
copper and tin upon the kitchen-shelves shone
brilliantly. The family received me hospitably
enough. The young men eyed my thews and
sinews with undisguised scorn, and half-jestingly
challenged me to "wrastle a fall" with Seth or
'Symmachus, observing that Japhet was too big
to make the match a fair one. But they were
equally anxious to see some proof of my
proficiency with the gun, concerning which they
had heard marvels from their elder brother. So,
a fowling-piece was taken down from the hooks
over the stove, where it usually hung, and half
an hour was devoted to shooting at a moving
mark, such as Seth's cap, or an old sea-boot
belonging to Japhet, which were successively
flung up into the air, and riddled with swan-
shot, amid general applause.

"Too dark for more! too dark for more!"
cried old Daddy Brown; " wall done, Britisher,
all the same! I could shoot a bit oncest, but
'twar with the rifle. Come to supper, boys and
gals. The old woman's just lit up."

The lamps which Mrs. Brown had just "lit
up," were three very large constructions of
white metal, the work of some Yankee pewterer,
which held a great deal of oil, and gave a blaze
of yellow light. The cloth was laid on the
walnut-wood table, and on it smoked a profusion
of hot viands, flanked by all sorts of bottles and
stone jars. The plates were of common delf,
but the drinking vessels were most various.
Thus, Daddy Brown had a silver tankard;
Japhet, a tin pannikin; the girls glasses; and
the rest of the party china mugs. I was still
more surprised to see that some of the forks
were of massive silver, while others were two-
pronged steel implements of the cheapest fabric.
We had scarcely sat down, before a remarkable
incident happened. I chanced, less through
inquisitiveness than absence of mind, to be turning
round the heavy silver fork assigned to me
when I descried some half-effaced armorial bearings