The girls looked serious, but a little sly, as if they could smile if the boys looked their way or if one of the old women should cough her store teeth out. Upstairs the family were seated in solemn silence, the two nieces, Emma and Sarah, and Emma's husband, Harkey, and Sarah's children--deceased Williams had no wife. These people sat in stony immobility, except when Harkey looked at his watch, and said:-- "Seem slow gitten here." Occasionally women came up the stairway and flung themselves upon the necks of the mourning nieces, who submitted to it without apparent disgust or astonishment, and sank back into the same icy calm after their visitors had "straightened their things," and retired to the reserved seats below. Deacon Williams, small, quick, with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers, selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an anxious lookout for the minister. The Deacon was a distant relative of the dead man, and it was generally admitted that he "would have a time of it" in administering upon the estate. At last the word was whispered about that the Elder was coming. Word was sent to the smoke-house and to the haystack to call the stragglers in. They came slowly, and finding the rooms all filled considered themselves absolved from a disagreeable duty, and went back to the sunny side of the haystack, where they smoked their pipes in ruminative enjoyment. The Elder, upon entering, took his place beside the coffin, the foot of which he used for a pulpit on which to lay his Bible and his hymn-book. A noise of whispering, rustling, scraping of feet arose as some old men crowded in among the women, and then the room became silent. The Elder took his seat and glanced round upon them all with solemn unrecognizing severity, while the mourners came down the creaking pine stairway in proper order of procedure. Everybody noticed the luxury of new dresses on the nieces and the new suits on the children. Everybody knew the feeling which led to these extravagances. Death, after all, was a majestic visitor, and money was not to stand in the way of a decent showing. Some of the girls smiled slyly at Isaac's gloves, which were too small and would go only halfway on, a fact he tried to conceal by keeping his hands folded. Each boy was provided with a large new stiff cotton handkerchief, which occupied immense space in outside pockets, crumpled as they were into a rustling ball with cruel salient angles like a Chinese puzzle. The Elder had attended two funerals that week, and like a jaded actor came lamely to his work. His prayer was not entirely satisfactory to the older people, they had expected a "little more power."