r to him, "Dust to Dust."

KEEPER OF THE BISHOP.

For a fortnight out of every six weeks the little white faced man
walked the garrison on St. Mary's Island in a broadcloth frock-coat,
a low waistcoat and a black riband of a tie fastened in a bow; and it
gave him great pleasure to be mistaken for a commercial traveller. But
during the other four weeks he was head-keeper of the lighthouse on
the Bishop's Rock, with thirty years of exemplary service to his
credit. By what circumstances he had been brought to enlist under the
Trinity flag I never knew. But now, at the age of forty-eight he was
entirely occupied with a great horror of the sea and its hunger for
the bodies of men; the frock-coat which he wore during his spells on
shore was a protest against the sea; and he hated not only the sea but
all things that were in the sea, especially rock lighthouses, and of
all rock lighthouses especially the Bishop.

"The Atlantic's as smooth as a ballroom floor," said he. It was a
clear, still day and we were sitting among the gorse on the top of the
garrison, looking down the sea towards the west. Five miles from the
Scillies, the thin column of the Bishop showed like a cord strung
tight in the sky. "But out there all round the lighthouse there are
eddies twisting and twisting, without any noise, and extraordinary
quick, and every other second, now here, now there, you'll notice the
sea dimple, and you'll hear a sound like a man hiccoughing, and all at
once, there's a wicked black whirlpool. The tide runs seven miles an
hour past the Bishop. But in another year I have done with her." To
her Garstin nodded across from St. Mary's to that grey finger post of
the Atlantic. "One more winter, well, very likely during this one more
winter the Bishop will go--on some night when a storm blows from west
or west-nor'west and the Irish coast takes none of its strength."

He was only uttering the current belief of the islands. The first
Bishop lighthouse had been swept away before its building was
finished, and though the second stood, a fog bell weighing no less
than a ton, and fixed ninety feet above the water, had been lifted
from its fittings by a single wave, and tossed like a tennis-ball into
the sea. I asked Garstin whether he had been stationed on the rock at
the time.

"People talk of lightships plunging and tugging at their cables," he
returned. "Well, I've tried lightships, and what I say is, ships are
built to plung