At these dreadful words Felix started forward to Lily's side; the young girl was trembling, and he feared she was about to fall. Indeed she would have fallen, but for his helping hand. Inward fire possessed the soul of the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell at the action of his son and his wrath was expressed in his face. Felix saw it, but did not heed it; his lips were firmly set as he yielded Lily to her grandfather's arms, who, as he bent over her, murmured, "I would have spared you the pain, my darling! But I thought that your helplessness and your innocent face would have pleaded for us." Then he turned to the minister. "Why do you refuse to perform the last rites over the body of my daughter?" "I am mistaken if you have not been informed. Her parents were members of the Wesleyan Methodist body, and the woman was not baptized in the Church of England. Therefore I cannot say prayers over her." "Is that God's law?" "It is mine!" replied the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, with inconsiderate haste. If, when he heard the rejoinder, he could have caused the old man to fall into dust at his feet, he would have done so. "You say truly, sir," said the old man, in a tone of bitter calmness. "It is not God's law; it is yours." The Reverend Emanuel Creamwell shaded his face with his hand; he did not choose that the feeling there expressed should be seen. He knew, by his son's sympathetic movement towards Lily, that Felix had gone over to the enemy, and a consciousness possessed him that Felix was not displeased at his discomfiture. Still it was his duty to assert himself, and he did so accordingly in severe measured terms, and in tones utterly devoid of feeling. "I have already told you that you came here to revile--to revile God through His minister. It is such as you who set men's minds afire, and drive them into the pit." But the old man interrupted him with, "Nay, sir, do not let us argue; I at least have no time. A dead woman is waiting for me. I must go and seek a minister who will say prayers over the poor clay. Come, my children." "To seek a minister!" echoed the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell. "What minister?" "A Methodist minister, as that is your will." "Presumptuous!" exclaimed the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, in wrath so pious that a colour came to his usually pale face. "No Methodist minister can be allowed to pray in _my_ churchyard!"--with a protecting look and motion of his fingers towards the ground where the dead lay--a look which said, "Fear not! My lips have blessed you; my prayers have sanctified you. Ye shall not be defiled!" "How, then, is my daughter to be buried?" asked the old man, with his hand to his heart. "The woman must be buried in silence," replied the minister.