“How good and kind it was of you, my lord, to put in an appearance at poor Archelaus Tubb’s funeral. I have no doubt the family were flattered by the extraordinary attention, and to be sure, what nasty, spiteful things have been said about your share in his death. Now, Robert, I will go with you and engage Miss Lovat whilst you talk to the archdeacon.” The arrival of the guests had in the meantime caused great satisfaction to the sight-seers, who had discussed and severely criticised the equipages. The meeting at Patience Kite’s cottage had been reported in the papers, the speech by Welsh given as he chose that it should be read, that of Saltren omitted altogether. Moreover, the county papers had announced the throwing open of the grounds on Saturday, and as this was a day of early closing, a good many townsfolk, mostly shopmen and shopgirls, took advantage of the occasion to come to Orleigh, and see the place where that notorious Lord Lamerton lived. They clustered about the garden gates, passing their comments on the arrivals, mostly disparaging, and expressed at times loud enough to be heard by those discussed. One or two parties arrived in hired conveyances. “Them’s too poor to keep a carriage,” was the observation with which they were saluted. The rector and Mrs. Cribbage came on foot. “These can’t afford a cab. Curate and his old housekeeper, won’t they eat!” By far the most stylish and astonishing was the equipage of Sir Bosanquet Gammon, the new high sheriff. Sir Bosanquet was a north-country man who had made a large fortune as a civil engineer. He was never able altogether to shake off his native dialect and to speak as an educated English gentleman. This was the more singular, as he asserted that the family was originally De Gammon, and had Plantagenet blood in it. His coat-of-arms on carriage and yacht was a patchwork of quarterings. That Plantagenet blood and fifty heiresses should not by their fused gentility have prevented Gammon from talking with a north-country twang was something to shake the foundations of Anthropology. Sir Bosanquet Gammon, being high sheriff, thought it incumbent on him to make a display, so he drove to Orleigh in a carriage with hammercloth, and powdered coachman and flunkeys. Giraldus Cambrensis, in his “Topography of Ireland,” says that in Meath, near Foure, are three lakes, each occupied by a special kind of fish, and he adds that, although these lakes are connected, the fish of each lake keep to themselves, and should they venture into the lake inhabited by the finny tribe of another species, they would be so like fish out of water, that they would die, unless indeed they precipitately retreated to their former habitation.