It was not a brilliant morning, but the sun was shining drowsily through a white haze like a dew-fog that hid the mountains. The snow of the night before was not quite washed away by the sharp rain of the morning; it still lay at the eaves of the thatched houses, and among the cobbles of the paved pathway. The blue smoke was coiling up through the thick air from every chimney when the bells at Bishop's Court began to ring for Christmas service. An old woman here and there came out of her cabin in her long blue cape and her mutch, and hobbled along on a stick to church. Two or three men in sea-boots, with shrimping nets over their shoulders and pipes in their mouths, sauntered down the lane that led by the shambles to the shore. Half an hour later, while the bells were still ringing, and the people were trooping into the chapel, the Bishop came out of his house and walked down the path toward the vestry. He had a worn and jaded look that morning, as if the night had gone heavily with him, but he smiled when the women courtesied as they passed, and waved his hand when the men fumbled their caps. "Good-morning, and a merry Christmas to you," he said, as he went by the open porch, to Will-as-Thorn, the parish clerk, who was tugging at the bell-rope there, bareheaded, stripped to his sheepskin waistcoat with its gray flannel sleeves, and sweating. He hailed Billy the Gawk, too, the hoary old dog turned penitent in his latter days. "A merry Christmas, Billy, and may you live to see many of them yet, please God!" Billy was leaning against the porch buttress and taking alms if any offered them. "Then it's not living it will be, my lord; it's lingering," said this old Bartimeus. And Jabez Gawne, the sleek little tailor, had the Bishop's salutation as he passed on in the ancient cloak with many buttons. "A merry Christmas to you, Jabez, and a good New Year." "Aw, 'deed, my lord," said Jabez, with a face as long as a fiddle, "if the New Year's no better than the ould one, what with quiet times and high rents and the children's schooling, it's going on the houses I'll be, middlin' safe." "Nay, nay, remember our old saying, Jabez: The greater the calm the nearer the south wind." As the Bishop was turning in at the vestry door, blind Kerry and her husband Hommy passed him, and he hailed them as he had hailed the others. "I'm taking joy to see you so hearty, my lord," said the blind woman. "Yes, I'm well, on the whole, thank God!" said the Bishop; "and how are you, Kerry?" "I'm in, my lord--I'm in; but distracted mortal with the sights. Och, sir, it's allis the sights, and the sights, and the sights; and it's Mastha Dan that's in them still. This morning, bless ye, when I woke, what should it be, behould ye, but a company of great ones from the big house itself, going down to the churchyard with lanterns. Aw, 'deed it was, sir, my lord, begging your pardon, though it's like enough you'll think it's wake and a kind of silly, as the sayin' is."