"'Prospecting,' said I. 'What's the news? Anything wrong with the Bishop?' "'There's nothing wrong with him; and won't be, any more. He broke a blood-vessel in the night. Flo looked in early this morning, and found him sleeping, as she thought. An hour later she took him a cup of tea, and was putting it down on the table by the bed, when she saw blood on the pillow. She's powerful upset.' "Two days later--the morning of the funeral--I met Captain Bill at the entrance of the town. He held the Bishop's small morocco-bound Bible in his hand; but for excellent reasons had made no change in his work-day attire. "'You're attending, of course?' was his greeting. 'Say, would you like to conduct? It lay between me and Huz-'n-Buz, and he was for tossing up; but I allowed he was altogether too hoary a sinner. So we made him chief mourner instead, along with Flo--the more by token that he's the only citizen with a black coat to his back. As for Flo, she's got to attend in colours, having cut up her only black gown to nail on the casket for a covering. Foolishness, of course; but she was set on it. But see here, you've only to say the word, and I'll resign to you.' "I declined, and suggested that for two reasons he was the man to conduct the service: first, as the most prominent inhabitant of Eucalyptus; and secondly, as having made himself in a way responsible for the Bishop from the first. "'As you like,' said he.' I told him, that first night, that I'd see him through; and I will.' "He eyed the Bible dubiously. 'It's pretty small print,' he added. 'I suppose it's all good, now?' "'If you mean that you're going to open the book and read away from the first full-stop you happen to light on--' "'That's what I'd planned. You don't suppose, do you, I've had time since Tuesday to read all this through and skim off the cream?' "'Then you'd better let me pick out a chapter for you.' "As I took the Bible something fluttered from it to the ground. Captain Bill stooped and picked it up. "'That's pretty, too,' he said, handing it to me. "It was a little bookmarker, worked in silk, with one pink rose, the initials M. P. (for Mercy Penno, no doubt), and under these the favourite lines that small West-country children in England embroider on their samplers:" 'Rose leaves smell When roses thrive: Here's my work When I'm alive. Rose leaves smell When shrunk and shred: Here's my work When I'm dead.' I turned to the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians: showed the captain where to begin; and laid the bookmarker opposite the place.