The startled listener was none other than Mr. Penrose, the
newly-appointed minister, who was awaiting a funeral, long
overdue. Looking round, his already pale face became a shade paler
as he saw no living form, other than himself.

There he stood, alone, a stranger in this moorland haunt, amid
falling shadows and rounding gloom, mocked by the mute records and
stony memorials of the dead.

Again the voice was heard--another hymn, and to a tune as old as
the mossed headstones that threw around their lengthening shadows.

'I'll praise my Maker--while I've breath,'

followed by a pause, as though breath had actually forsaken the
body of the singer. But in a moment or two the strain continued:

'And when my voice--is lost in death.'

Whereon the sounds ceased, and there came a final silence, death
seeming to take the singer at his word.

As Mr. Penrose looked in the direction from which the voice
travelled, he saw a shovel thrown out of a newly-made grave,
followed by the steaming head and weather-worn face of old Joseph,
the sexton, all aglow with the combined task of grave-digging and
singing.

'Why, Joseph, is it you? I couldn't tell where the sound came