The prayers he began to murmur were inaudible, but when Maria and Tit'Be came and knelt beside him he drew from a pocket his string of large heads and began to tell them in a low voice.

The chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the table, shaking his head sadly from time to time as is seemly in the house of mourning, and because his own grief was deep and sincere.
At last he discovered speech.

"It is a heavy loss.

You were fortunate in your wife, Samuel; no one may question that.

Truly you were fortunate in your wife." This said, he could go no further; he sought in vain for some words of sympathy, and at the end stumbled into other talk.