“Second-class? Here you are!” called out an official, as he thrust me almost rudely into a vile mob of travellers. The bell rang out, and two snorts and a scream followed, then a heave and a jerk, and away we went As soon as I had time to look around me, I saw that my companions were all persons of an humble order of the middle class,--the small shopkeepers and traders, probably, of the locality we were leaving. Their easy recognition of each other, and the natural way their conversation took up local matters, soon satisfied me of this fact, and reconciled me to fall back upon my own thoughts for occupation and amusement This was with me the usual prelude to a sleep, to which I was quietly composing myself soon after. The droppings of the conversation around me, however, prevented this; for the talk had taken a discussional tone, and the differences of opinion were numerous. The question debated was, Whether a certain Sir Samuel Somebody was a great rogue, or only unfortunate? The reasons for either opinion were well put and defended, showing that the company, like most others of that class in life in England, had cultivated their faculties of judgment and investigation by the habit of attending trials or reading reports of them in newspapers. After the discussion on his morality, came the question, Was he alive or dead? “Sir Samuel never shot himself, sir,” said a short pluffy man with an asthma. “I 've known him for years, and I can say he was not a man to do such an act.” “Well, sir, the Ostrich and the United Brethren offices are both of your opinion,” said another; “they 'll not pay the policy on his life.” “The law only recognizes death on production of the body,” sagely observed a man in shabby black, with a satin neckcloth, and whom I afterwards perceived was regarded as a legal authority. “What's to be done, then, if a man be drowned at sea, or burned to a cinder in a lime-kiln?” “Ay, or by what they call spontaneous combustion, that does n't leave a shred of you?” cried three objectors in turn. “The law provides for these emergencies with its usual wisdom, gentlemen. Where death may not be actually proven it can be often inferred.” “But who says that Sir Samuel is dead?” broke in the asthmatic man, evidently impatient at the didactic tone of the attorney. “All we know of the matter is a letter of his own signing, that when these lines are read I shall be no more. Now, is that sufficient evidence of death to induce an insurance company to hand over some eight or ten thousand pounds to his family?” “I believe you might say thirty thousand, sir,” suggested a mild voice from the corner. “Nothing of the kind,” interposed another; “the really heavy policies on his life were held by an old Cumberland baronet, Sir Elkanah Crofton, who first established Whalley in the iron trade. I 've heard it from my father fifty times, when a child, that Sam Whalley entered Milford in a fustian jacket, with all his traps in a handkerchief.”