Job Slip went down to the water, and it was dark. He walked apart, and took himself into that solitary place on the wharves which he remembered, where he had knelt in the rain, one night, and said, “God,” for Mr. Bayard.

A mackerel keg was there—the same one, perhaps; he overturned it, and sat down, and tried to understand. Job had not been able to understand since Mr. Bayard was hurt.

Thought came to him slowly, and with pain like that caused by the return of congested blood to its channels.

“He is dead,” said Job. “Lord A’mighty, he ain’t alive. Seems I couldn’t get it into my head. They’ve killed him. He’s goin’ to be buried.”

Job clenched his gnarled hands together, and shook them at the sky; then they dropped.

“Seems like shakin’ fists at him,” thought Job. “I ain’t a-goin’ to. S’posen he’s up yander. That’s the idee. Lord A’mighty, what do you mean by it? You didn’t stop to think of us reformed men, did you, when you let this happen?... For Christ’s sake. Amen,” added Job, under the impression that he had been giving utterance to a prayer.

“Mr. Bayard?” called Job aloud. He slipped off the keg and got upon his knees. As he changed his position, the fisherman vaguely noticed the headlight of the schooner on which he was to have taken his trip, that night. “There goes the Tilly E. Salt,” said Job, interrupting himself; “she’s got to weigh without me, this time. I’m guard of honor for the—the—I can’t say it!” groaned Job. “It’s oncredible him bein’ in a—him put in a—Lord, he’s the livin’est man I ever set my eyes on; he can’t die!... Mr. Bayard? Mr. Bayard, sir?”

Job paused, as if he expected to be answered. The water dashed loudly against the old pier. The distant cry of the buoy came over the harbor. The splash of retreating oars sounded faintly somewhere, through the dark.

“He’s livin’ along,” said Job, after some thought. “He can’t get fur out of Angel Alley. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d miss us, someways; he’s so used to us; he’s hoverin’ in them hymn-toons and that gymnasium he set so much by. I’ll bet he is. He’s lingerin’ in us poor devils he’s spent three year makin’ men of.... He’s a-livin’ here.”

Job struck his own broad breast, and then he struck it again. A shudder passed over his big frame; and then came the storm. He had not wept before, since Mr. Bayard died. The paroxysm wearied and weakened him, and it was the piteous fact that these were the next words which passed the lips of the half-healed drunkard.

“God A’mighty, if I only had a drink!”

---

Two hours afterwards, Job Slip came up the wharves; he came as he went, alone; he walked with a steady step; he held his head high in the dark. He whispered as he walked:—

“I didn’t—no, I didn’t do it.... Bein’ left so—I’ve alwers had you, sir, before, you know. It makes a sight o’ difference when a man hain’t anybody but God. He’s a kinder stranger. I didn’t know, one spell there—but I was goin’ under.... You won’t desert a fellar, will you—yander? I’ll do you credit, sir, see if I don’t. I won’t disgrace you, ——d if I will!”

At that moment Job shied suddenly, like a horse, clear from one side of the wharf to the other. He cried aloud,—

“Why, why, what’s here? What’s got me?” Fingers touched him, but they were of flesh; little fingers, but they were warm, and curled confidingly in Job’s big hand.

“Joey? You? Little Joey! Why, father’s sonny boy! You come just in the right time, Joey. I was kinder lonesome. I miss the minister. I ain’t—just feelin’ right.”

“Fa—ther,” said Joey pleasantly; “Marm said to find you, for she said she fought you’d need you little boy.”

“And so I do, my son, and so I do!” cried Job.

With Joey’s little fingers clasped in his, Job walked up Angel Alley, past the doors of the dens that were closed, and the doors that were open still; and if the ghost of the dear, dead minister had swept visibly before Job and Joey, no man could have tempted or disturbed them less.

---

In his own chapel, in Angel Alley, Bayard lay in state. It was such state as the kings of the earth might envy, and its warriors and its statesmen and its poets do not know. It was said that his was the happiest dead face that ever rebuked the sadness of the living; and the fairest that they who wept for him had ever seen. Death had not marred his noble beauty; and in death or life there was no comelier man. All the city thronged to show him reverence who had lived among them baffled, doubted, and sick at heart; and it appeared that those who had done the least for him then, would have done most for him now: the people of ease; the imitators; the conformers, and the church members who never questioned their own creeds or methods; the summer strangers playing at life upon the harbor coast, and visitors from a distance where the preacher had his fame.

But when these superior and respectable persons crowded to give their tardy tribute to him, they were told that there was no room for them in the chapel; nay, they could scarcely find footing in the dust of Angel Alley. For they were held back by the sacred rights of “nearest mourners”; and Bayard’s mourners claimed him. It was said that hundreds of sunburnt men had stood waiting in the street since midnight for the opening of the doors, and the chance to enter. Then, there had passed up the steps of Christlove Chapel the great mass of the neglected and the poor, the simple and the sodden and the heart-broken, and those who had no friends but only that one man; and God had taken him. The fishermen of Windover, and the poor girls, the widows of Windover, and her orphaned children, the homeless, foreign sailors, and the discontented laborers from the wharves poured in; and the press was great.

He lay among them regally, wrapped in his purple pall. And he and Helen knew that her bridal roses withered forever out of mortal sight upon his breast. But she had given him up at this last hour to his people; he was theirs, and they were his, and what they willed they did for him, and she did not gainsay them. They covered him with their wild flowers, after the fashion of the Cape; and clumsy sailors brought big, hothouse bouquets flaring on wires and splashed with tears, “to give the minister.” And his dead heart, like his living one, was found large enough to hold them all.

One poor girl brought no flowers to Bayard’s burial. Lena brought only sobs instead, and watered his pall with her tears, and hid her face, and passed on, with her hands before it.

Now, around the bier there stood a guard of honor strange to see; for it was chosen from the Windover drunkards whom the pastor had saved and cured. Among them, Job Slip stood proudly in command at the minister’s head: the piteous type of all that misery which Bayard had died to lessen, and of that forgotten manliness which he had lived to save.

There was no dirge sung at Christlove Chapel when he was borne from it. A girl’s voice from a darkened corner of the gallery started “the minister’s hymn,” but trembled, and broke quite down. So the fishermen took it up, and tried to sing,—

“I need thee every hour.”

But they, too, faltered, for they needed him too much; and in silence, trying not to sob, with bared, bowed heads they passed out gently (for his spirit was upon them), thinking to be better men.

---

One of the summer people, a stranger in the town, strolling on the beach that day, was attracted by an unusual and impressive sight upon the water, and asked what that extraordinary display of the signs of public mourning meant.

An Italian standing by, made answer,—

“The Christman is dead.”

He tried to explain further, but choked, and pointed seaward, and turned away.

For, from every main in the harbor, as far as eye could see, the flags of Windover floated at half-mast. The fishermen had done him this honor, reserved only for the great of the earth, and for their own dead mates; and most sacred for these last.

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