If Tom Heriot’s funeral had called all the gentry of Fife to do the family honour, it may be supposed that his father’s, following so soon after, and in such circumstances of aggravated distress, brought out a still greater attendance. Mrs. Murray once more sat at the Manse window, with many tears, watching the mournful procession, and wondering much whether it would have been better for him had the Laird of Pitcomlie been “resigned,” or whether it was well for the old man to be thus removed quickly, that he might not have sorrow on sorrow. It seemed to her that his was the lot she would have chosen for herself, and she thought tremulously as she wept, of her daughter in India, and prayed for her as she cried for poor Charlie Heriot. Miss Jean had not ventured this time to join Mrs. Murray at her window. The old woman was peeping from behind her blinds in the white gable, with eyes that shone at sight of the many carriages. “Thomas Heriot may be proud,” she said to herself, confused between the two deaths, and not feeling quite sure that her nephew was not in one of the mourning coaches enjoying the melancholy grandeur of which he was himself the object. All that was honourable in Fife was there, the old gentry, and the new people of wealth, and the tenantry, and the town--even the fishers, smelling of salt water, though arrayed in the suit of “blacks” which it is a point of honour with that class to keep in readiness for a funeral. The churchyard was quite full of people, intent upon showing their respect for Pitcomlie. It was Mr. Charles who had received and arranged all this miscellaneous assemblage. People at his age do not mourn for each other very acutely, perhaps because the separation cannot be a long one, perhaps because that grand final event has become so ordinary an occurrence. To the young it is less familiar, less close at hand. The older one grows, the more one is disposed to represent death to one’s self as an every-day incident, and old men who are themselves approaching that verge are apt to dismiss somewhat summarily those who have preceded them. Besides, a week had elapsed between Mr. Heriot’s death and his funeral, and that long interval of seclusion, and absorption in one idea, is enough to take the edge of all but the most sensitive feelings. It was anxiety more than grief that sat heavy on the brow of Mr. Charles. “We must think now of the living, not of the dead,” he had said on the previous evening. And indeed there was reason enough to make that transference of solicitude, and to think of the living. For all the courses of nature had been driven out of trim, and no one of the party cared to confront the position, or ask themselves what was to come of it: except indeed Verna, who thought of nothing else; but her thoughts would have been far from pleasing to the others had they known.