ver and over."

"For guidance to-morrow," I murmured. "Mr. Hines, I'm not sure that I
know Bartholomew Storrs's God. Nor can I tell what manner of sign he
might give, or with what meaning. But if I know my God, whom I believe
to be the true God, your Minnie is safe with him."

"Yeh? You're a good guy, Dominie," said Mr. Hines in his emotionless
voice.

I took him home with me to sleep. But we did not sleep. We smoked.

Minnie Munn's funeral morning dawned clear and fresh. No word came from
Bartholomew Storrs. I tried to find him, but without avail.

"We'll go through with it," said Mr. Hines quietly.

How small and insignificant seemed our tiny God's Acre, as the few
mourners crept into it behind Minnie Munn's body; the gravestones like
petty dots upon the teeming earth, dwarfed by the overshadowing
tenements, as if death were but an incident in the vast, unhasting,
continuous sweep of life, as indeed perhaps it is. Then the grandeur of
the funeral service, which links death to immortality, was bodied forth
in the aged minister's trembling voice, and by it the things which are
of life were dwarfed to nothingness. But my uneasy mind refused to be
bound by the words; it was concerned with Bartholomew Storrs, standing
grim, haggard, inscrutable, beside the grave, his eyes upturned and
waiting. Too well I knew for what he was waiting; his sign. So, too, did
Mr. Hines, still hard, still pink, still impeccably tailored, and still
clinging to his elegant lacquered cane, as he supported little, broken
Mr. Munn, very pathetic and decorous in full black, even to the gloves.

The sonorous beauty and simplicity of the rite suddenly checked,
faltered. Bartholomew Storrs leaned over anxiously to the minister. The
poor, gentle, worn-out old brain was groping now in semi-darkness,
through which shot a cross-ray of memory. The tremulous voice took on
new confidence, but the marrow of my spine turned icy as I heard the
fatally misplaced and confused words that followed:

"If any man know--know just and good cause why this woman--why this
woman--should not--"

Bartholomew Storrs's gaunt hand shot upward, high in air, outspread in
the gesture of forbiddance. His deep voice rang, overbearing the
stumbling accents of the clergyman.

"A sign! A sign from on High! O God, thou hast spoken through thy
servant to forefend a sore offense. Listen, ye people. This woman--"

He stopped as there rose, on the opposite side of the open grave