But if Billy never came again his kith and kin came frequently. It became a jest that the Bishop kept the beggars from every house but his own, and that no one else could get a beggar. He had a book, which he called his "Matricula Pauperum," in which he entered the names of his pensioners with notes of their circumstances. He knew all the bits of family history--when Jemmy Corkell's wife was down with lumbago, and when Robbie Quirk was to kill his little pig. Billy the Gawk was not alone in thinking that he could outwit the Bishop. When the Bishop wanted a new pair of boots or a new coat, the tailor or shoemaker came to Bishop's Court, and was kept there until his job of work was finished. The first winter after his arrival in his Patmos, he wanted a cloak, and sent for Jabez Gawne, the sleek little fox who had been spokesman for the conspirators against James Quirk, the schoolmaster. Jabez had cut out the cloak, and was preparing it for a truly gorgeous adornment, when the Bishop ordered him to put merely a button and a loop on it to keep it together. Jabez thereupon dropped his cloth and held up his hands where he sat cross-legged on the kitchen dresser, and exclaimed, with every accent of aggrieved surprise: "My Lord, what would become of the poor buttonmakers and their families if every one ordered his tailor in that way?" "How so, Jabez?" "Why, they would be starved outright." "Do you say so, Jabez?" "Yes, my Lord, I do." "Then button it all over, Jabez," said the Bishop. The Deemster was present at that interview, and went away from it tittering audibly. "Give to the raven and he'll come again," he muttered. "I forgot that poor Jabez would have his buttons in his breeches-pocket," said the Bishop. The Manxman had not yet made up his mind concerning the composite character of Bishop Mylrea, his dignity and his humility, his reserve and his simplicity, when a great event settled for the Manxman's heart the problem that had been too much for his head. This was no less a catastrophe than a general famine. It came upon the island in the second year of the Bishop's residence, and was the cause of many changes. One of the changes was that the Bishop came to be regarded by his people with the reverence of Israel for Samuel, and by his brother, the Deemster, with the distrust, envy, and, at length, mingled fear and hatred of Saul for Israel's prophet. The land of the island had been held under a tenure of straw, known as the three-lives' tenure; the third life was everywhere running out, and the farms were reverting to the Lord of the Isle. This disheartened the farmers, who lost all interest in agriculture, let their lands lie fallow, and turned to the only other industry in which they had an interest, the herring fishing. The herrings failed this season, and without fish, with empty barns, and a scant potato crop, caused by a long summer of drought, the people were reduced to poverty.