ooking
at it.

It looked just as if it might be the boot of his brother who had gone
down in the great storm last winter on his way home from fishing.

There was still something _inside_ the boot too, but he durst not look
to see what it was, nor did he exactly know what to do with the sea-boot
either.

He didn't want to take it home and frighten his mother, nor did he quite
fancy chucking it back into the sea again; so he made up his mind to go
to the parson of Broenoe, and beg him to bury it in a Christian way.

"But I can't bury a sea-boot," quoth the parson.

The fellow scratched his head. "Na, na!" said he.

Then he wanted to know how much there ought to be of a human body before
it could have the benefit of Christian burial.

"That I cannot exactly tell you," said the parson; "a tooth, or a
finger, or hair clippings is not enough to read the burial service over.
Anyhow, there ought to be so much remaining that one can see that a soul
has been in it. But to read Holy Scripture over a toe or two in a
sea-boot! Oh, no! that would never do!"

But Isaac watched his opportunity, and managed to get the sea-boot into
the churchyard on the sly, all the same.

And home he went.

It seemed to him that he had done the best he could. It was better,
after all, that _something_ of his brother should lie so near God's
house than that he should have heaved the boot back into the black sea
again.

But, towards autumn, it so happened that, as he lay out among the
skerries on the look-out for seals, and the ebb-tide drove masses of
tangled seaweed towards him, he fished up a knife-belt and an empty
sheath with his oar-blade.

He recognised them at once as his brother's.

The tarred wire covering of the sheath had been loosened and bleached by
the sea; and he remembered quite well how, when his brother had sat and
cobbled away at this sheath, he had chatted and argued with him about
the leather for his belt which he had taken from an old horse which they
had lately killed.

They had bought the buckle together over at the storekeeper's on the
Saturday, and mother had sold bilberries, and capercailzies, and three
pounds of wool. They had got a little tipsy, and had had such fun with
the old fishwife at the headland, who had used a bast-mat for a sail.

So he took the belt away with him, and said nothing about it. It was no
good giving pain to no purpose, thought he.

But the longer the winter lasted the more he both