"The better part of them don't get through the cold weather," said
Danny. "Two or three of the old ones have been here for years, and are
as much belonging to Deephaven as the meetin'-house; but the rest of
them an't to be depended on. You'll miss the young ones by the dozen,
come spring. I don't know myself but they move inland in the fall of the
year; they're knowing enough, if that's all!"

Kate and I stood in the wide doorway, arm in arm, looking sometimes at
the queer fisherman and the porgies, and sometimes out to sea. It was
low tide; the wind had risen a little, and the heavy salt air blew
toward us from the wet brown ledges in the rocky harbor. The sea was
bright blue, and the sun was shining. Two gulls were swinging lazily to
and fro; there was a flock of sand-pipers down by the water's edge, in a
great hurry, as usual.

Presently the fisherman spoke again, beginning with an odd laugh: "I
_was_ scared last winter! Jack Scudder and me, we were up in the Cap'n
Manning storehouse hunting for a half-bar'l of salt the skipper said was
there. It was an awful blustering kind of day, with a thin icy rain
blowing from all points at once; sea roaring as if it wished it could
come ashore and put a stop to everything. Bad days at sea, them are;
rigging all froze up. As I was saying, we were hunting for a half-bar'l
of salt, and I laid hold of a bar'l that had something heavy in the
bottom, and tilted it up, and my eye! there was a stir and a scratch and
a squeal, and out went some kind of a creatur', and I jumped back, not
looking for anything live, but I see in a minute it was a cat; and
perhaps you think it is a big story, but there were eight more in there,
hived in together to keep warm. I car'd 'em up some new fish that night;
they seemed short of provisions. We hadn't been out fishing as much as