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