g-room that
could compare with the purity of that interior. It was cleanliness itself;
but I saw many such before I left Louisburgh, in both the old town and the
new.

We sat down in the "hutch," as they call it, before a cheery wood-fire,
and soon forgot all about the outside rain. But if we had shut out the
rain, we had not shut out the neighboring Atlantic. That was near enough;
the thunderous surf, whirling, pouring, breaking against the rocky shore
and islands, was sounding in our ears, and we could see the great white
masses of foam lifted against the sky from the window of the hutch, as we
sat before the warm fire.

"You was lucky to get in last night," said the master of the hutch, an
old, weather-beaten fisherman.

"Yes," replied Picton, surveying the grey head before him with as much
complacency as he would a turnip; "and a serene old place it is when we
get in."

To this the weather-beaten replied by winking twice with both eyes.

"Rather a dangerous coast," continued Picton, stretching out one thigh
before the fire. "I say, don't you fishermen often lose your lives out
there?" and he pointed to the mouth of the harbor.

"There was only two lives lost _in seventy years_," replied the old man
(this remarkable fact was confirmed by many persons of whom we asked the
same question during our visit), "and one of them was a young man, a
stranger here, who was capsized in a boat as he was going out to a vessel
in the harbor."

"You are speaking now of lives lost in the fisheries," said Picton, "not
in the coasting trade."

"Oh!" replied the old man, shaking his head, "the coasting trade is
different; there is a many lives lost in that. Last year I had a brother
as sailed out of this in a shallop, on the same day as yon vessel,"
pointing to the Balaklava; "he went out in company with your captain; he
was going to his wedding, he thought, poor fellow, for he was to bring a
young wife home with him from Halifax, but he got caught in a storm off
Canseau, and we never heard of the shallop again. He was my youngest
brother, gentlemen."

It was strange to be seated in that old cottage, listening to so dreary a
story, and watching the storm outside. There was a wonderful fascination
in it, nevertheless, and I was not a little loth to leave the bright
hearth when the sailors from the schooner came for us and carried us on
board again to dinner.

The storm continued; but Picton and I found plenty to do that day.