And now I scarce can say how it escaped me that my first duty was to take the body of the priest who had died in my house to one of the churchyards for Christian burial. There must have been some end of Providence in my strange forgetfulness, for if this thing had but come into my wild thoughts, and I had indeed done what it was fitting that I should do, then must certain wonderful consequences have fallen short of the blessing with which God has blessed them. What I did, thinking no evil, was to pick up my spade and go out on the moor and delve for the dead man a shallow grave. As I turned to the door I stumbled over something that lay on the floor. Stooping to look at it, I found it to be the poor sea-mew. It was dead and stiff, and had still its wings outstretched as if in the act of flight. I had not noted until now, when with a fearful glance backward I stepped out into the night, that the storm had gone. A thick dew-cloud lay deep over the land, and the round moon was shining through it. I chose a spot a little to the south of the stone circle on the Black Head, and there by the moon's light I howket a barrow of earth. The better part of an hour I wrought, and when my work was done I went back to my house, and then the dead man was cold. I took a piece of old canvas, and put it about the body, from head to feet, wrapping it over the clothes, and covering the face. This done, I lifted the dead in my arms and carried it out. Very hollow and heavy was the thud of my feet on the turf in that uncertain light. As I toiled along I recalled the promise that I had given to the priest to see my father and speak with him. This memory brought me the sore pain of a wounded tenderness, but it strengthened my resolve. When I had reached the grave which I had made the night was near to morning, the dew-cloud had lifted away, and out of the unseen, murmuring sea that lay far and wide in front of me a gray streak, like an arrow's barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky. One glance more I took at the dead man's face in that vague foredawn, and its swart meagreness seemed to have passed off under death's composing hand. I covered the body with the earth, and then I said my prayer, for it was nigh to my accustomed hour. Also I sang my psalm, kneeling with my face toward the sea. And while I sang in that dank air the sky lightened and the sun rose out of the deep. I know not what touched me then, if it was not the finger of God Himself; but suddenly a great burden seemed to fall from me, and my heart grew full of a blessed joy. And, O Father, I cried, I am delivered from the body of the death I lived in! I have lived, I have died, and I live again! I saw apparently that the night of my long imprisonment was past, that the doors of my dungeon were broken open, and that its air was to be the breath of my nostrils no more.