recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that the
mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all
such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and
the ladies of his house had attended. There had been no offence in
the poor ashes when they were brought again to the light of day;
the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned were
buried in their clothes. To supply the great sudden demand for
coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy at tools, to
work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. The coffins were
neatly formed;--I had seen two, waiting for occupants, under the
lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of
the tent where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly, one of the
graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard.
So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked
people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts
whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their
forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a
step from the clergyman's dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter;
the white surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on
at any time, for a funeral service.

The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as
consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad.
I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm
dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone,
as a simple duty that was quietly done and ended. In speaking of
it, they spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but
laid no stress upon their own hard share in those weary weeks,
except as it had attached many people to them as friends, and
elicited many touching expressions of gratitude. This clergyman's