The clock on the landing was striking three--the most solemn hour of day and night, for it is the hour between. Stowell, with a heavy heart, the book in one hand and his candle in the other, was going to bed. Reaching the door of his father's room he dropped to his knees. "Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!" But after a while a light seemed to break on him. Where his father now was he would know that there was no help for it--that he, too, must follow the line of honour. "Yes," he thought, rising and going on to his own room. "I must do the right, whatever it may cost me." IV On the morning of the burial, Stowell received a letter from Bessie Collister: "Dere Victor, "I am sorry to here from Alick about the death of the Deemster you must feel it verry much the loss of such a good kinde father everrybody is talking about him and saying he was the best gentleman that everr was thank you for the nice cloths Mrs. Quayle bought me. Alick is very kinde-- "Bessie." The poor, illiterate, inadequate, ill-spent message made Stowell's heart grow cold, and with a certain shame he read it by stealth and then smuggled it away. The news of the Deemster's death had fallen on the Manx people like a thunder-bolt. The one great man of Man had gone. It was almost as if the island had lost its soul. No work was done on the day of the funeral. At ten o'clock in the morning the whole population seemed to be crossing the Curragh lanes to Ballamoar. By eleven the broad lawn was covered with a vast company of all classes, from the officials to the crofters. A long line of carriages, cars and stiff carts, lined the roads that surrounded the house. The day had broken fair, with a kind of mild brightness, but out on that sandy headland the wind had risen and white wreaths of mist were floating over the land. It was late September and the leaves were falling rapidly. Nobody entered the house. According to Manx custom all stood outside. At half-past eleven the front door was opened and the body was brought out, under a pall, and laid on four chairs in front of it. A moment later Victor Stowell came behind, bare-headed and very pale. A wide space was left for him by the bier. A creeper that covered the house was blood-red at his back. Somebody started a hymn--"Abide with me"--and it was taken up by the vast company in front. The rooks swirled and screamed over the heads of the singers. The bald head of old Snaefell looked down through the trees. Then the procession was formed. It took the grassy lane at the back by which the Deemster had always gone to church. Everybody walked, and six sets of bearers claimed the right "to carry the old man home." They sang two hymns on the way: "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Rock of Ages." Between the verses the wind whistled through the gorse hedges on either side. Sometimes it raised the skirt of the pall and showed the bare oak beneath.