Before Ballamona an open cart was standing, with the tail-board down, and the horse was pawing the gravel which had once--on a far different occasion--been strewn with the "blithe-bread." The door of the house stood ajar, and a jet of light from within fell on the restless horse without. The Bishop entered the house, and found all in readiness for the hurried night burial. On chairs that were ranged back to back a rough oak coffin, like an oblong box, was resting, and from the rafter of the ceiling immediately over it a small oil-lamp was suspended. On either side of the hall were three or four men holding brands and leathern lanterns, ready for lighting. The Deemster was coming and going from his own room beyond, attended in bustling eagerness by Jarvis Kerruish. Near the coffin stood the vicar of the parish, father of the dead man's dead wife, and in the opening of a door that went out from the hall Mona stood weeping, with the dead man's child in her arms. And even as it is only in the night that the brightest stars may truly be seen, so in the night of all this calamity the star of the Bishop's faith shone out clearly again, and his vague misgivings fell away. He stepped up to Mona, whose dim eyes were now fixed on his face in sadness of sympathy, and with his dry lips he touched her forehead. Then, in the depth of his own sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him, he looked down at the little one in Mona's arms, where it leaped and cooed and beat its arms on the air in a strange wild joy at this gay spectacle of its father's funeral, and his eyes filled for what the course of its life would be. Almost as soon as the Deemster was conscious of the Bishop's presence in the house, he called on the mourners to make ready, and then six men stepped to the side of the coffin. "Thorkell," said the Bishop, calmly, and the bearers paused while he spoke, "this haste to put away the body of our dear Ewan is unseemly, because it is unnecessary." The Deemster made no other answer than a spluttered expression of contempt, and the Bishop spoke again: "You are aware that there is no canon of the Church requiring it, and no law of State demanding it. That a body from the sea shall be buried within the day it has washed ashore is no more than a custom." "Then custom shall be indulged with custom," said Thorkell, decisively. "Not for fifty years has it been observed," continued the Bishop; "and here is an outrage on reason and on the respect we owe to our dead." At this the Deemster said: "The body is mine, and I will do as I please with it." Even the six carriers, with their hands on the coffin, caught their breath at these words; but the Bishop answered without anger: "And the graveyard is mine, in charge for the Church and God's people, and if I do not forbid the burial, it is because I would have no wrangling over the grave of my dear boy."