“Oh, my man, my man!” she wailed, “My own sweetheart!”

There was a moment’s silence.  Then one of the widows stepped out, and approaching the girl, laid her hand on her arm.

“Are ye making a mock of me, Mary Bell?” she said, “Or is it God’s truth ye’re speaking to my husband lying there?”

The distraught creature called Mary Bell looked up with a sudden passion glowing in her tear-wet eyes.

“It’s God’s truth!” she cried, “And ye needn’t look scorn on me!—­ for both our hearts are broken, and no one can ever mend them.  Yes!  It’s God’s truth!  He was your husband, but my sweetheart!  And we’ll neither of us see a finer man again!”

The curate listened, amazed and aghast.  Was nothing going to be done to stop this scandalous scene?  He looked protestingly from right to left, but in all the group of fisher-folk not a man moved.  Were these two women going to fight over the dead?  He hummed and hawed—­ and began in a thin piercing voice—­“My friends—­” when he was again interrupted by the passionate speech of Mary Bell.

“I’m sorry for ye,” she said, lifting herself from the coffin to which she clung, and turning upon the widow of the drowned man, “and ye can be just as sorry for me!  He loved us both, and why should we quarrel!  A man is ever like that—­just chancy and changeful—­but he tried his honest hardest not to love me—­yes, he tried hard!—­it was my fault! for I never tried!—­I loved him!—­and I’ll love him, till I go where he is gone!  And we’ll see who God’ll give his soul to!”

This was too much for the curate.

“Woman!” he thundered, “Be silent!  How dare you boast of your sin at such a time, and in such a place!  Take her away from that coffin, some of you!”

So he commanded, but still not a man moved.  The curate began to lose temper in earnest.

“Take her away, I tell you,” and he advanced a step or two, “I cannot permit such a scandalous interruption of this service!”

“Patience, patience, measter,” said one of the men standing by, “When a woman’s heart’s broke in two ways it ain’t no use worrying her.  She’ll come right of herself in a minute.”

But the curate, never famous for forbearance at any time, was not to be tampered with.  Turning to his verger he said,

“I refuse to go on!  The woman is drunk!”

But now the widow of the dead man suddenly took up the argument in a shrill voice which almost tore the air to shreds.

“She’s no more drunk than you are!” she cried passionately, “Leave her alone!  You’re a nice sort of God’s serving man to comfort we, when we’re all nigh on losing our wits over this mornin’ o’ misery, shame on ye!  Mary Bell, come here!  If so be as my husband was your sweetheart, God forgive him, ye shall come home wi’ me!—­and we’ll never have a word agin the man who is lying dead there.  Come wi’ me, Mary!”

With a wild cry of anguish, the girl rushed into her arms, and the two women clung together like sisters united in the same passionate grief.  The curate turned a livid white.