te colour, was slightly mixed
with grey. A pair of bright grey eyes looked out from underneath bushy
eyebrows. His lips were close set. His bony hands were large and
ungainly. The Rev. Mr. Simpson had been a carpenter before he was
"called." He went immediately to the stand where lay the Bible and
hymn-book. He was followed by a man who had entered with him,--a man
with soft eyes and a kindly face. He was as tall as the pastor, and
slender, but without the other's gauntness. He was evidently a church
official of some standing.

With strange inappropriateness, the preacher selected and gave out the
hymn:

Sister, thou wast mild and lovely,
Gentle as the summer's breeze.

With some misgivings, it was carried through in the wavering treble of
the women and the straggling bass of the few men: then the kindly-faced
man, whom the preacher addressed as "Brother Hodges," knelt and offered
prayer. The supplication was very tender and childlike. Even by the
light of faith he did not seek to penetrate the veil of divine
intention, nor did he throw his javelin of prayer straight against the
Deity's armour of eternal reserve. He left all to God, as a child lays
its burden at its father's feet, and many eyes were moist as the people
rose from their knees.

The sermon was a noisy and rather inconsequential effort. The preacher
had little to say, but he roared that little out in a harsh, unmusical
voice accompanied by much slapping of his hands and pounding of the
table. Towards the end he lowered his voice and began to play upon the
feelings of his willing hearers, and when he had won his meed of sobs
and tears, when he had sufficiently probed old wounds and made them
bleed afresh, when he had conjured up dead sorrows from the grave, when
he had obscured the sun of heavenly hope with the vapours of earthly
grief, he sat down, satisfied.

The people went forward, some curiously, some with sympathy, to look
their last on the miserable dead. Mrs. Davis led the weeping child
forward and held him up for a last gaze on his mother's face. The poor
geraniums were wiped and laid by the dead hands, and then the undertaker
glided in like a stealthy, black-garmented ghost. He screwed the
pine-top down, and the coffin was borne out to the hearse. He clucked to
his horses, and, with Brother Hodges and the preacher in front, and Mrs.
Davis, Miss Prime, and the motherless boy behind, the little funeral
train moved down the street tow