"Presumptuous!" exclaimed the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, in wrath so pious that a colour came to his usually pale face. "No Methodist minister can be allowed to pray in my churchyard!"--with a protecting look and motion of his fingers towards the ground where the dead lay--a look which said, "Fear not! My lips have blessed you; my prayers have sanctified you. Ye shall not be defiled!"
"How, then, is my daughter to be buried?" asked the old man, with his hand to his heart.
"The woman must be buried in silence," replied the minister.
As if in sympathy with the words, a dark cloud passed across the face of the sun, and the sunbeam, with its myriad wonders, vanished on the instant, while the truant flashes of light that were playing in the corners of the room darted gladly away to places where light was.
The old man bowed his head, and the words came slowly from his trembling lips.
"Cruel! Unjust! Wicked!" he said. "Bitterly, bitterly wicked! Do we not all worship the same God? What has this innocent clay done, that holy words may not fall upon the earth that covers her? What have we done, that the last consolation of prayer shall be denied to us?" Then looking the minister steadily in the face, he said in a firm voice, "According to your deserts may you be judged! According to your deserts may you, who set your law above God's, and call yourself His priest, be dealt with when your time comes!"
Turning, he was about to go, when the voice of the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell stopped him.
"Now that you have done your reviling, attend to me for a few moments. You lived in this parish once?"
"Twenty years ago," replied the old man. "All my life up to that time--I and my poor daughter. There will be some here who will remember me."
"I remember you myself. You had a son?"