When they reached the cross roads in front of the church the bell began to toll. At that moment a white mist was driving across the church tower and almost obscuring it. The Bishop of the island was at the gate, waiting for the procession, but Parson Cowley, pale and trembling, was also there, and he would have fought to the death for his right to bury the Deemster. "I am the Resurrection and the Life," he began in his quavering voice, as the procession came up, and at the next moment the mists vanished. The little churchyard with its weather-beaten stones, seemed to look up at the wonderful sky and out on the sightless sea. The bearers had to bend their knees as they passed through the low door. Every seat in the body of the church was occupied, and great numbers had to remain outside. But Victor Stowell sat alone in the pew of the Ballamoars with the marble tablet on the wall behind him--four hundred years of his family and he the last of them. During the reading of the Epistle the lashing and wailing of the wind outside almost drowned the Bishop's voice. The service ended with the singing of another hymn, "O God our help in ages past." Everybody knew the words, and they were taken up by the people outside: "_Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away._" Thus far Victor Stowell had gone through everything in a kind of stupor. He was conscious that the island was there to do honour to her greatest son, but that was nothing to him now. When he came to himself he was standing by the open vault of the Stowells. A line of stones lay over the closed part of it, some of them old and worn and with the lettering almost obliterated. But a cross of white marble, which had been dislodged from its place, lay at his feet, and it bore the words: "_To the dear memory of Isabel, the beloved wife of Douglas Stowell, Deemster of this Isle._" Victor's throat was throbbing. He was losing (what no man can lose twice) his father and greatest friend, whose slightest word and wish should be as sacred to him as his soul. He heard the words "dust to dust" and they were like the reverberation of eternity. Then came a dead void, after Parson Cowley's voice had ceased, and it was just as if the pulse of the world had stopped. And then, at that last moment as he stepped forward and looked down, and everybody fell back for him, and only the sea's boom was audible as it beat on the cliffs below, somebody (he did not turn to look, for he knew who it was) coming up to his side, and putting her arm through his, said in a tremulous voice, "He is better there. In their death they are not divided." It was Fenella. At the next moment, something he could not resist, something unconquerable and overwhelming, made him put his arms about her and kiss her. CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE SAVING OF KATE KINKADE The Governor was waiting for Stowell at the side gate to Ballamoar.