n it, much like a child
hunting grasshoppers in a hay-field. I was less than ten paces from
it when the light suddenly vanished, and five paces more knocked the
bottom out of the mystery. The object was a battered and empty
meat-can.

"I had passed a hundred such, at least, on my way. The camps had
lain pretty close to the track, and the rains descending upon their
refuse heaps had washed the labels off these cans, that now, as sun
and moon rose and passed over the mountain side, flashed moving
signals down to Eucalyptus in the valley--signals of failure and
desolation. And these had been the Bishop's pillar of fire in the
wilderness!"

'Was it weary, then,
In the wilderness?' . . .

"I turned and went down the track.

"At the Necropolis gate I found Captain Bill standing, with a heavy
and puzzled face, beside my horse.

"'I was stepping up to Cornice House; but found your nag here, and
concluded to wait. I've been waiting the best part of an hour.
What in thunder have you been doing with yourself?'

"'Prospecting,' said I. 'What's the news? Anything wrong with the
Bishop?'

"'There's nothing wrong with him; and won't be, any more. He broke a
blood-vessel in the night. Flo looked in early this morning, and
found him sleeping, as she thought. An hour later she took him a cup
of tea, and was putting it down on the table by the bed, when she saw
blood on the pillow. She's powerful upset.'

"Two days later--the morning of the funeral--I met Captain Bill at
the entrance of the town. He held the Bishop's small morocco-bound
Bible in his hand; but for excellent reasons had made no change in
his work-day attire.

"'You're attending, of course?' was his greeting. 'Say, would you
like to conduct? It lay between me and Huz-'n-Buz, and he was for
tossing up; but I allowed he was altogether too hoary a sinner.
So we made him chief mourner instead, along with Flo--the more by
token that he's the only citizen with a black coat to his back.
As for Flo, she's got to attend in colours, having cut up her only
black gown to nail on the casket for a covering. Foolishness, of
course; but she was set on it. But see here, you've only to say the
word, and I'll resign to you.'

"I declined, and suggested that for two reasons he was the man to
conduct the service: first, as the most prominent inhabitant of
Eucalyptus; and secondly, as having made himself in a way responsible
for the Bishop from the first.