followed by a pause, as though breath had actually forsaken the body of the singer. But in a moment or two the strain continued: 'And when my voice--is lost in death.' Whereon the sounds ceased, and there came a final silence, death seeming to take the singer at his word. As Mr. Penrose looked in the direction from which the voice travelled, he saw a shovel thrown out of a newly-made grave, followed by the steaming head and weather-worn face of old Joseph, the sexton, all aglow with the combined task of grave-digging and singing. 'Why, Joseph, is it you? I couldn't tell where the sound came from. It seems, after all, the grave can praise God, although the prophet tells us it cannot. Do you always sing at your work?' 'Partly whod. You see it's i' this way, sir,' said Joseph; 'grave-diggin's hard wark, and if a felley doesn'd sing a bit o'er it he's like baan to curse, so I sings to stop swears. There's a fearful deal o' oaths spilt in a grave while it's i' th' makin', I can tell yo'; and th' Almeety's name is spoken more daan i' th' hoile than it is up aboon, for all th' parson reads it so mich aat of his book. But this funeral's baan to be lat', Mr. Penrose'; and drawing a huge watch from his fob, he exclaimed: 'Another ten minutes and there's no berryin' i' th' yard this afternoon.' 'I don't understand you, Joseph,' said Mr. Penrose wonderingly. 'We never berry here after four o'clock.' 'But there's no law forbidding a funeral at any hour that I know of--is there?' 'There is wi' me. I'm maisther o' this berryin' hoile, whatever yo' may be o' th' chapel. But they're comin', so I'll oppen th' chapel durs.' Old Joseph, as he was called, had been grave-digger at Rehoboth for upwards of fifty years, and so rooted were his customs that none cared to call them in question. For minister and deacons he showed little respect. Boys and girls fled from before his shadow; and the village mothers frightened their offspring when naughty by threatening to 'fotch owd Joseph to put them in th' berryhoile.' The women held him in awe, declaring that he sat up at night in the graveyard to watch for corpse-candles. Even the shrewd and hard-headed did not care to thwart him, preferring to be friends rather than foes. Fathers, sons and sons' sons--generation after generation--had been laid to rest by the sinewy arms of Joseph. They came, and they departed; but he, like the earth, remained. A gray, gaunt Tithonus, him 'only cruel immortality consumed.'