ista waited a funeral
procession ascended the road. Baptista hastened across, and by the time
the procession entered the cemetery gates she had unobtrusively joined
it.

In addition to the schoolmaster's own relatives (not a few), the
paragraph in the newspapers of his death by drowning had drawn together
many neighbours, acquaintances, and onlookers. Among them she passed
unnoticed, and with a quiet step pursued the winding path to the chapel,
and afterwards thence to the grave. When all was over, and the relatives
and idlers had withdrawn, she stepped to the edge of the chasm. From
beneath her mantle she drew a little bunch of forget-me-nots, and dropped
them in upon the coffin. In a few minutes she also turned and went away
from the cemetery. By five o'clock she was again in Pen-zephyr.

'You have been a mortal long time!' said her husband, crossly. 'I
allowed you an hour at most, mee deer.'

'It occupied me longer,' said she.

'Well--I reckon it is wasting words to complain. Hang it, ye look so
tired and wisht that I can't find heart to say what I would!'

'I am--weary and wisht, David; I am. We can get home to-morrow for
certain, I hope?'

'We can. And please God we will!' said Mr. Heddegan heartily, as if he
too were weary of his brief honeymoon. 'I must be into business again on
Monday morning at latest.'

They left by the next morning steamer, and in the afternoon took up their
residence in their own house at Giant's Town.

The hour that she reached the island it was as if a material weight had
been removed from Baptista's shoulders. Her husband attributed the
change to the influence of the local breezes after the hot-house
atmosphere of the mainland. However that might be, settled here, a few
doors from her mother's dwelling, she recovered in no very long time much
of her customary bearing, which was never very demonstrative. She
accepted her position calmly, and faintly smiled when her neighbours
learned to call her Mrs. Heddegan, and said she seemed likely to become
the leader of fashion in Giant's Town.

Her husband was a man who had made considerably more money by trade than
her father had done: and perhaps the greater profusion of surroundings at
her command than she had heretofore been mistress of, was not without an
effect upon her. One week, two weeks, three weeks passed; and, being pre-
eminently a young woman who allowed things to drift, she did nothing
whatever either to dis