And Margaret went down to the favorite parlor, where Mrs. Helmstedt was laid out. The shutters were all closed to darken the room; but the windows were up to ventilate it; and the breeze blowing through the Venetian blinds of the bay window played upon the broken harp, making a fitful moaning in strange harmony with the scene. Margaret reverently lifted the covering from the face of the dead, and pressed kiss after kiss upon the cold brow and lips. And then she took her seat by the side of her dead mother, and never left her again for a moment while she lay in that room. The third day from that, being Saturday, the funeral took place. As it was to be a boat funeral, all the neighbors of the adjacent shores and islands sent or brought their boats. A large company assembled at the house. The religious services were performed in the parlor where the body had been first laid out. After which the procession formed and moved down to the beach, where about fifty boats were moored. Not a single sail among them--all were large or small rowboats. The oars were all muffled, and the oarsmen wore badges of mourning on their sleeves. The island boat, the _Nereide_, had had her sails and masts all taken away, and had been painted white, and furnished with a canopy of black velvet raised on four poles. The twelve oarsmen seated in it were clothed in deep mourning. Into this boat the coffin was reverently lowered. This was the signal for the embarkation of every one else. In twenty minutes every boat was ready to fall into the procession that was beginning to form. The boat containing the Rev. Mr. Wellworth and Dr. Hartley led the van. Then followed the _Nereide_, with its sacred freight. Behind that came _The Pearl Shell_, containing the orphaned girl, Mrs. Houston and Ralph. After them came a skiff bearing Colonel and Mrs. Compton and Colonel Houston. Other boats, occupied by friends and acquaintances, and others still, filled with old family servants, followed in slow succession to the number of fifty boats or more. Slowly and silently the long procession moved across the waters. It formed a spectacle solemn and impressive, as it was strange and picturesque. The sun was near its setting when this funeral train reached Plover’s Point, an abrupt headland crowned with ancient forest trees, that nearly hid from sight the old graystone dwelling-house. On the west side of this bluff, under the shadows of great elms and oaks of a hundred years’ growth, the family resting place lay. Here the boats landed. The coffin was reverently lifted out. The foot procession formed and walked slowly up the hill. And just as the latest rays of the setting sun were flecking all the green foliage with gold, they gathered around her last bed, that had been opened under the shade of a mighty oak. There they lay her down to rest--