“Come here, Lieutenant!” “Aye, aye, sir.” “This is a dead pirate. He died defending—defending his life. He will be discovered if we leave him here.” This seemed eminently probable. The Lieutenant looked alarmed. He took a step or two on the loft floor and returned, relieved. “No, he ain’t dead, either,” he announced, “he’s only as——” “He is dead,” repeated the Head Captain firmly. “Dead, I say. You shut up, will you? And we must bury him.” The Lieutenant looked sulky and chewed the end of his sash. To be so put down before the Vicar! It was hardly decent. And she, in her usual and irritating way, grasped the situation immediately. “We must bury him right off,” she whispered excitedly, “before that man gets up here.” “That man,” added the Head Captain, “is a dreadful bad fellow, I tell you. If he was to catch us up here, I don’t know—I don’t know but he’d—here, come back, Lieutenant! Come back, I say!” They stole up to the dead pirate, who had not the appearance attributed by popular imagination to those who have died nobly. The Lieutenant was frankly in the dark as to his superior officer’s intentions. “If you take him off to bury him he’ll wake——” “Hush your noise!” interrupted the Head Captain angrily. The Vicar could not wait for any one else’s initiative, but began feverishly pulling up handfuls of hay and piling them lightly over the dead pirate’s boots. The Head Captain covered the man’s body with two hastily snatched armfuls, and as the Vicar’s courage gave out at this point, coolly laid a thin wisp directly over the red face. The pirate was buried. It gave one a thrill to see hardly a dim outline of his figure. “Hats off, my men,” whispered the Head Captain, hoarse with emotion, “and we will say a prayer. Lieutenant,” with a noble renunciation in his expression, “_you_ may say the prayer!” The Lieutenant was touched, and melted from his sulky scorn. “What’ll I say? What’ll I say?” he muttered excitedly. “Not ‘Hollow be thy Name’? That’s a long one.” “Now I lay——” suggested the Vicar tremulously. “Pshaw, no!” interrupted the Head Captain. “Not a baby thing like that! If you don’t know one, Lieutenant, I’ll make one up.” “No, I’ll say one,” urged the Lieutenant hastily. “I’ll say one, Captain. I’ll say my colick that I had yesterday. Wait up a second, till I remember it.” The heavy, regular breathing continued to come out from under the hay, where lay the martyred pirate. The hens in a near-by henyard cackled shrilly, the trilling of an indefatigable canary in the coachman’s rooms rose and fell through the hot June air. Red and dripping with the heat, dusty and sprinkled with the hay, the outlaws stood, solemn and tense, starting at the least fancied sound from below. The Lieutenant cleared his throat, shut his eyes tight to assist his memory, and began his burial service: