The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached a fishery-ladder, which we now knew very well how to climb, and wound our “dim and perilous way” through the evergreen labyrinth of fish bowers, emerging on the solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman’s house.  Here lives and works and wears himself out William Waterland, a deep-voiced, broad-chested, round-shouldered man, dressed, not in cloth of gold, but of oil, with the foxy remnant of a last winter’s fur cap clinging to his large, bony head, a little in the style of a piece of turf to a stone.  You seldom look into a more kindly, patient face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light out of a large, warm heart.  His countenance is one sober shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by a true and guileless smile.  William Waterland has seen the “island-of-ice.”  “It lies off there, two miles or more, grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water.”

It was nearly six o’clock; and yet, as there were signs of the fog clearing away, we thought it prudent to wait.  A dull, long hour passed by, and still the sun was high in the northwest.  That heavy cod-seine, a hundred fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply, and made it row heavily.  For all that, there was time enough yet, if we could only use it.  The fog still came in masses from the sea, sweeping across the promontory between us and Torbay, and fading into air nearly as soon as it was over the land.  In the mean time, we sat upon the rocks, upon the wood-pile, stood around and talked, looked out into the endless mist, looked at the fishermen’s houses, their children, their fowls and dogs.  A couple of young women, that might have been teachers of the village school, had there been a school, belles of the place, rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely combed, tripped shyly by, each with an arm about the other’s waist, and very merry until abreast of us, when they were as silent and downcast as if they had been passing by their sovereign queen or the Great Mogul.  Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amusing.  We speculated upon the astonishment that would have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts, had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city fashionables in full bloom.

At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the house, and sat, not under the good man’s roof, but under his chimney, a species of large funnel, into which nearly one end of the house resolved itself.  Here we sat upon some box-like benches before a wood fire, and warmed ourselves, chatting with the family.  While we were making ourselves comfortable and agreeable, we made the novel and rather funny discovery of a hen sitting on her nest just under the bench, with her red comb at our fingers’ ends.  A large griddle hung suspended in the more smoky regions of the chimney, ready to be lowered for the baking of cakes or frying fish.  Having tarred my hand, the fisherman’s wife, kind woman, insisted upon