surrounds it with pale leaves. Here was the grave dug that
morning, doubtless by uneasy diggers, to the sound of the nigh sea
and the cries of sea-birds; meanwhile the dead man waited in his
house, and the widow and another aged woman leaned on the fence
before the door, no speech upon their lips, no speculation in their
eyes.

Sharp at the hour the procession was in march, the coffin wrapped
in white and carried by four bearers; mourners behind--not many,
for not many remained in Rotoava, and not many in black, for these
were poor; the men in straw hats, white coats, and blue trousers or
the gorgeous parti-coloured pariu, the Tahitian kilt; the women,
with a few exceptions, brightly habited. Far in the rear came the
widow, painfully carrying the dead man's mat; a creature aged
beyond humanity, to the likeness of some missing link.

The dead man had been a Mormon; but the Mormon clergyman was gone
with the rest to wrangle over boundaries in the adjacent isle, and
a layman took his office. Standing at the head of the open grave,
in a white coat and blue pariu, his Tahitian Bible in his hand and
one eye bound with a red handkerchief, he read solemnly that
chapter in Job which has been read and heard over the bones of so
many of our fathers, and with a good voice offered up two prayers.
The wind and the surf bore a burthen. By the cemetery gate a
mother in crimson suckled an infant rolled in blue. In the midst
the widow sat upon the ground and polished one of the coffin-
stretchers with a piece of coral; a little later she had turned her
back to the grave and was playing with a leaf. Did she understand?
God knows. The officiant paused a moment, stooped, and gathered
and threw reverently on the coffin a handful of rattling coral.