76 DYER’S HOLLOW. 
his nearest neighbor—whose name pro- 
claimed his Cape Cod nativity — made me 
think well not only of his neighbor, but of 
him. There were forty-two Portuguese 
families in Truro, he said. ‘‘There are 
more than that in Provincetown?” I sug- 
gested. He shrugged hisshoulders. ‘Yes, 
about half the people.” And pretty good 
people they are, if such as I saw were fair 
representatives. One boy of fourteen (un- 
like the milkman’s heir, he was very small 
for his years, as he told me with engaging 
simplicity) walked by my side for a mile or 
two, and quite won my heart. A true 
Nathanael he seemed, in whom was no guile. 
He should never go to sea, he said; nor was 
he ever going to get married so long as his 
father lived. He loved his father so much, 
and he was the only boy, and his father 
could n’t spare him. “But didn ’t your 
father go to sea?”? “Oh, yes; both my fa- 
thers went to sea.”’ That was a puzzle; but 
presently it came out that his two fathers 
were his father and his grandfather. He 
looked troubled for a moment when I in- 
quired tle whereabouts of the poorhouse, in 
the direction of which we happened to be 
