Doya knelt long and prayed by her husband’s corpse, then with reverent hands she wrapped it closer in the shroud she had taken from her own person for that purpose, and while doing so she found among the skeleton fingers a small pocket-book. With an eager hope she opened this message from the departed. The sleeve of the dead man’s oil-skin coat had protected the paper from destruction, and the words which Bartle’s dying hand had pencilled on the leaves were easily deciphered. This is what he had written:— “My wife and children, forgive me. God has done so. I am dying here, within a short distance of you all and home. I do not know how many days I have been here. It seems like ages. No help can come to me, and I am beyond the reach of being heard. I fled from your accusing eyes, and the boat carried me here. She was tossed like a weed on the rocks, and I have crawled up hither to die a harder death than any I ever dealt. It is the meet reward for all my crimes—that I know; but I am not alone, and I am forgiven. Try to think kindly of me. I have been very wicked, but now I am at peace, and dying. Something whispers you will know my fate, my children, my wife.” Could anything have been of such infinite value to Doya as those parting words? They washed away every trace of bitter or offended feeling, and when she placed the precious relic in her bosom, she blotted out from its generous heart every remembrance of Bartle, save their early love and his Christian death. Very slowly, very tenderly, Doya encased the withered form in the broken bits of wood, lashing them around it by means of some fishing lines which they had chanced to have in the boat. Very carefully she attached some pieces of rock to the rope, and then, after one long lingering look, and a silent, earnest prayer, she let it slide gently down into the calm limpid ocean. The waves gave one low gurgling sigh as they opened to receive that strangely buried thing, and Doya, kneeling on the cold stone, strained her sight to see the very last of her husband. The clear water hid nothing from her, and she saw him sink to rest down below the sea. And then the tide bore a floating mass of weed, glittering brown and crimson, to the spot, and laid it over poor Bartle, who slumbers peacefully there in that wild cavern, cradled by the surf, and lulled by the wind. And surf and wind say, better than sculptured stone, that mercy endureth for ever, and He, our Father, and our Judge, is long-suffering, and doeth all things well.