It was past mid-day when the procession set out; the whole county had come from all its corners, to do honour to Sir William, and the parish sent forth a humble audience, scattered along all the roads, half-sad, half-amused by the sight of all the carriages and the company. When they caught a glimpse of my lady in her deep crape, the women cried: but dried their tears to count the number of those who followed, and felt a vague gratification in the honour done to the family. All the men who were employed on the estate, and the farmers, and even many people from Farboro’, the markettown, swelled the procession. Such a great funeral had never been seen in the district. Lady Westland and her daughter, and Mrs. Booth, and the other ladies in the parish, assembled under the rectory trees, and watched the wonderful procession, not without much remark on the fact that Dolly had gone to the grave with the family, a thing which no one else had been asked to do. It was not the ladies on the lawn, however, who remarked the strange occurrence which surprised the lookers-on below, and which was so soon made comprehensible by what followed. When the procession left the church-door, the stranger who was living at the Markham Arms appeared all of a sudden, in the old-fashioned scarves and hat-bands of the deepest conventional woe, and placed himself behind the coffin, in a line with, or indeed a little in advance of, Paul. There was a great flutter among the professional conductors of the ceremony when this was observed. One of the attendants rushed to him, and took him by the arm, and remonstrated with anxious whispers. “You can follow behind, my good gentleman--you can follow behind,” the undertaker said; “but this is the chief mourner’s place.” “It is my place,” said the intruder aloud, “and I mean to keep it.” “Oh, don’t you now, sir--don’t you now make a business,” cried the distressed official. “Keep out of Sir Paul’s way!”