FullReads

“I had passed a hundred such, at least, on my way. The camps had lain pretty close to the track, and the rains descending upon their refuse heaps had washed the labels off these cans, that now, as sun and moon rose and passed over the mountain side, flashed moving signals down to Eucalyptus in the valley–signals of failure and desolation. And these had been the Bishop’s pillar of fire in the wilderness!”

‘Was it weary, then,
In the wilderness?’ . . .

“I turned and went down the track.

“At the Necropolis gate I found Captain Bill standing, with a heavy and puzzled face, beside my horse.

“‘I was stepping up to Cornice House; but found your nag here, and concluded to wait. I’ve been waiting the best part of an hour. What in thunder have you been doing with yourself?’

“‘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.

“We walked a few paces together as far as the green knoll that I have described as overhanging Eucalyptus, and there I halted to wait for the funeral, while Captain Bill went on to the Necropolis to make sure that the grave was ready and all arrangements complete. The procession was not due to start for another quarter of an hour, so I found a comfortable boulder and sat down to smoke a pipe. Right under me stretched the deserted main street, and in the hush of the morning–it was just the middle of the Indian summer, and the air all sunny and soft–I could hear the billiard balls click-click-clicking as usual, and the players’ voices breaking in at intervals, and the banjoes tinkling away down the street from saloon to saloon. These and the distant chatter of the river were all the sounds; and the river’s chatter seemed hardly so persistent and monotonous as the voices of the saloons and the unceasing question–“