The hearse was drawn up and the tail-boards were opened. The funeral
extinguished its right ear with its hat as four men lifted the coffin
out and laid it over the grave. The priest--a pale, quiet young
fellow--stood under the shade of a sapling which grew at the head of
the grave. He took off his hat, dropped it carelessly on the ground,
and proceeded to business. I noticed that one or two heathens winced
slightly when the holy water was sprinkled on the coffin. The drops
quickly evaporated, and the little round black spots they left were
soon dusted over; but the spots showed, by contrast, the cheapness and
shabbiness of the cloth with which the coffin was covered. It seemed
black before; now it looked a dusky grey.

Just here man's ignorance and vanity made a farce of the funeral. A
big, bull-necked publican, with heavy, blotchy features, and a
supremely ignorant expression, picked up the priest's straw hat and
held it about two inches over the head of his reverence during the
whole of the service. The father, be it remembered, was standing in
the shade. A few shoved their hats on and off uneasily, struggling
between their disgust far the living and their respect for the dead.
The hat had a conical crown and a brim sloping down all round like a
sunshade, and the publican held it with his great red claw spread over
the crown. To do the priest justice, perhaps he didn't notice the
incident. A stage priest or parson in the same position might have
said, "Put the hat down, my friend; is not the memory of our departed
brother worth more than my complexion?" A wattle-bark layman might
have expressed himself in stronger language, none the less to the
point. But my priest seemed unconscious of what was going on.
Besides, the publican was a great and important pillar of the church.
He couldn't, as an ignorant and conceited ass, lose such a good