He was wake and closed his eyes. “Is there anything more I can do for yees?” asks I. “Nothing, uncle dear; the summer breeze is sweet.” He never said another rational word, for the fever set in again and he began to rave. He talked as if he were on ship again and then he would change to ould Ireland and he would be aplayin with his comrades, and his laughing was sore to hear. Then there came a long while when he was quiet, just tossing uneasy like at times as he slept. My eyes were on the river and the ships and the green fields bright beyant, when I hears him whisper, “Mother, dear, have ye been long waiting here for your boy?” and he spoke to her tender and soft as he must have done manys the time in ould Ireland. Then it was Aileen he saw, and it was true-lover talk. Oh, it was all so beautiful; the poor boy dying there of the fever on the river bank talkin so sweet and loving with the two women who had filled his heart, an its the lot of love a true Irishman’s heart can hould. I was gripping his hand, watching him, when all at once his jaw fell and I saw the soul had fled. I laid him out as I best could, and rolling the blanket round him lifted the corpse on my shoulder and carried it to the spot he told me. There were shovels and picks in plenty and I set myself to dig the grave. The smell of the fresh earth brought back to me my own family and farm that I had clean forgot that dreadful day, and I determined to be back with them at once. There were men at work near me finishing a long trench, and I saw them watching me and I watched them and listened to their talk. The sun was low before the grave was finished to my liking. There was no use trying to get a priest, they had enough to do with the dying without burying the dead, so I laid the corpse carefully in the grave, said a prayer and filled it in. I drove in a cedar picket to mark the spot, for I meant some day to put a headstone there, but I never did, for I was never able to go back. When all was done I went over to one of the men who had been digging the trench that I had seen by his talk was an Irishman. He was smoking his pipe with the lave, who were waiting for the burial. I got him by himself and told him my errand on the island and now I was done, I wanted away at once. That’s not easy, he said. There were guards to prevent any coming on or leaving the island except by the steamer and with a permit. “Sure,” I says, “if I stay here till tomorrow I may be a dead man.” “That you will,” says he, “an thin you’ll hev to go as a passenger in the steamboat that takes emigrants right on to Montreal.” “I’ll never go on an emigrant steamboat,” says I, minding the one I had seen. He spoke in French to two men near us. They lived above Beauport, he told me, and while they came, like himself, to bury the dead for big pay, they broke the rules by going home at night, when wind and tide served, in a small boat. If I’d help them to get done, they would let me go with them. The job