a year or two he got along some better.  When his wife died he was sore afflicted, and couldn’t get over it, and he didn’t know what to do or what was going to become of ’em with winter comin’ on, and—­well—­I may’s well tell ye; he took to drink and it killed him right off.  I come over two or three times and made some gruel and fixed him up’s well’s I could, and the little gals done the best they could, but he faded right out, and didn’t know anything the last time I see him, and he died Sunday mornin’, when the tide begun to ebb.  I always set a good deal by Andrew; we used to play together down to the great cove; that’s where he was raised, and my folks lived there too.  I’ve got one o’ the little gals.  I always knowed him and his wife.”

Just now we heard the people in the house singing “China,” the Deephaven funeral hymn, and the tune suited well that day, with its wailing rise and fall; it was strangely plaintive.  Then the funeral exercises were over, and the man with whom we had just been speaking led to the door a horse and rickety wagon, from which the seat had been taken, and when the coffin had been put in he led the horse down the road a little way, and we watched the mourners come out of the house two by two.  We heard some one scold in a whisper because the wagon was twice as far off as it need have been.  They evidently had a rigid funeral etiquette, and felt it important that everything should be carried out according to rule.  We saw a forlorn-looking kitten, with a bit of faded braid round its neck, run across the road in terror and presently appear again on the stone-wall, where she sat looking at the people.  We saw the dead man’s eldest son, of whom he had told us in the summer with such pride.  He had shown his respect for his father as best he could, by a black band on his hat and a pair of black cotton gloves a world too large for him.  He looked so sad, and cried bitterly as he stood alone at the head of the people.  His aunt was next, with a handkerchief at her eyes, fully equal to the proprieties of the occasion, though I fear her grief was not so heartfelt as her husband’s, who dried his eyes on his coat-sleeve again and again.  There were perhaps twenty of the mourners, and there was much whispering among those who walked last.  The minister and some others fell into line, and the procession went slowly down the slope; a strange shadow had fallen over everything.  It was like a November day, for the air felt cold and bleak.  There were some great sea-fowl high in the air, fighting their way toward the sea against the wind, and giving now and then a wild, far-off ringing cry.  We could hear the dull sound of the sea, and at a little distance from the land the waves were leaping high, and breaking in white foam over the isolated ledges.

The rest of the people began to walk or drive away, but Kate and I stood watching the funeral as it crept along the narrow, crooked road.  We had never seen what the people called “walking funerals” until we came to Deephaven, and there was something piteous about this; the mourners looked so few, and we could hear the rattle of the wagon-wheels.  “He’s gone, ain’t he?” said some one near us.  That was it,—­gone.