there inert, a mere handful of a man, his wife inertly seated by

his head. They seemed to have outgrown alike our needs and

faculties; they neither spoke nor listened; they suffered us to

pass without a glance; the wife did not fan, she seemed not to

attend upon her husband, and the two poor antiques sat juxtaposed

under the high canopy of palms, the human tragedy reduced to its

bare elements, a sight beyond pathos, stirring a thrill of

curiosity. And yet there was one touch of the pathetic haunted me:

that so much youth and expectation should have run in these starved

veins, and the man should have squandered all his lees of life on a

pleasure party.

On the morning of 17th September the sufferer died, and, time

pressing, he was buried the same day at four. The cemetery lies to

seaward behind Government House; broken coral, like so much road-

metal, forms the surface; a few wooden crosses, a few

inconsiderable upright stones, designate graves; a mortared wall,

high enough to lean on, rings it about; a clustering shrub

surrounds it with pale leaves. Here was the grave dug that

morning, doubtless by uneasy diggers, to the sound of the nigh sea

and the cries of sea-birds; meanwhile the dead man waited in his

house, and the widow and another aged woman leaned on the fence

before the door, no speech upon their lips, no speculation in their

eyes.

Sharp at the hour the procession was in march, the coffin wrapped

in white and carried by four bearers; mourners behind--not many,

for not many remained in Rotoava, and not many in black, for these

were poor; the men in straw hats, white coats, and blue trousers or

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