"'As you like,' said he.' I told him, that first night, that I'd see
him through; and I will.'

"He eyed the Bible dubiously. 'It's pretty small print,' he added.
'I suppose it's all good, now?'

"'If you mean that you're going to open the book and read away from
the first full-stop you happen to light on--'

"'That's what I'd planned. You don't suppose, do you, I've had time
since Tuesday to read all this through and skim off the cream?'

"'Then you'd better let me pick out a chapter for you.'

"As I took the Bible something fluttered from it to the ground.
Captain Bill stooped and picked it up.

"'That's pretty, too,' he said, handing it to me.

"It was a little bookmarker, worked in silk, with one pink rose, the
initials M. P. (for Mercy Penno, no doubt), and under these the
favourite lines that small West-country children in England embroider
on their samplers:"

'Rose leaves smell
When roses thrive:
Here's my work
When I'm alive.
Rose leaves smell
When shrunk and shred:
Here's my work
When I'm dead.'

I turned to the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the
Corinthians: showed the captain where to begin; and laid the
bookmarker opposite the place.

"We walked a few paces together as far as the green knoll that
I have described as overhanging Eucalyptus, and there I halted to
wait for the funeral, while Captain Bill went on to the Necropolis
to make sure that the grave was ready and all arrangements complete.
The procession was not due to start for another quarter of an hour,
so I found a comfortable boulder and sat down to smoke a pipe.
Right under me stretched the deserted main street, and in the
hush of the morning--it was just the middle of the Indian summer,
and the air all sunny and soft--I could hear the billiard balls
click-click-clicking as usual, and the players' voices breaking in at
intervals, and the banjoes tinkling away down the street from saloon
to saloon. These and the distant chatter of the river were all the
sounds; and the river's chatter seemed hardly so persistent and
monotonous as the voices of the saloons and the unceasing question--"

'Was it weary there
In the wilderness?
Was it weary-y-y, 'way down in Goshen?'

"Suddenly, far down the street, there was a stir, and from the door
of No. 67 half a dozen men came staggering out into the sunshine
under a black coffin, which they carried s