! Put up a bit of a prayer," whispered Grannie to her
husband; and Caesar took a pinch of snuff out of his waistcoat pocket,
and fell to "wrastling with the Lord."

Bridget seemed to be comforted. "I see the jasper gates," she panted,
fixing her hazy eyes on the scraas under the thatch, from which broken
spiders' webs hung down like rats' tails.

Then she called for Pete. She had something to give him. It was the
stocking foot with the eighty greasy Manx banknotes which his father,
Peter Christian, had paid her fifteen years before. Pete lit the candle
and steadied it while Grannie cut the stocking from the wall side of the
bed-ticking.

Black Tom dropped the sugar-pounder and exposed his broken teeth in his
surprise at so much wealth; John the Widow blinked; and Kelly the Thief
poked his head forward until the peak of his postman's cap fell on to
the bridge of his nose.

A sea-fog lay over the land that morning, and when it lifted Bridget's
soul went up as well.

"Poor thing! Poor thing!" said Grannie. "The ways were cold for
her--cold, cold!"

"A dacent lass," said John the Clerk; "and oughtn't to be buried with
the common trash, seeing she's left money."

"A hard-working woman, too, and on her feet for ever; but 'lowanced in
her intellecks, for all," said Kelly.

And Caesar cried, "A brand plucked from the burning! Lord, give me more
of the like at the judgment."

When all was over, and tears both hot and cold were wiped away--Pete
shed none of them--the neighbours who had stood with the lad in the
churchyard on Maughold Head returned to the cottage by the water-trough
to decide what was to be done with his eighty good bank-notes. "It's
a fortune," said one. "Let him put it with Mr. Dumbell," said another.
"Get the boy a trade first--he's a big lump now, sixteen for spring,"
said a third. "A draper, eh?" said a fourth. "May I presume? My nephew,
Bobbie Clucas, of Ramsey, now?" "A dacent man, very," said John the
Widow; "but if I'm not ambitious, there's my son-in-law, John Cowley.
The lad's cut to a dot for a grocer, and what more nicer than having
your own shop and your own name over the door, if you plaze--' Peter
Quilliam, tay and sugar merchant!'--they're telling me John will be
riding in his carriage and pair soon."

"Chut! your grannie and your carriage and pairs," shouted a rasping
voice at last. It was Black Tom. "Who says the fortune is belonging to
the lad at all? It's mine, and if there's law