After dinner, while a heavy snow fell, the friends of Uncle Billy Malone put the body in a pine coffin, one made for the purpose by the dead man, and bore it to its last resting place. A hand-car, which was operated on a spur of a trunk-line road, was used in place of a hearse. The mourners staggered by the car and shoved it along the rails. On the way the casket fell off but was soon replaced. The drinking begun early in the morning, had been kept up all day, and Col. LaFayette and his friends were pretty rocky. When the funeral party reached the church, Bellevue Chapel, there was no one to greet it. Simp Syder, the colored grave digger, was the only living creature in sight. The trees, the church top, and the tombstones were covered with snow, and everything seemed dead and cold. The corpse was carried to the open grave and let down. After the ropes were pulled out the associates of the late Uncle Billy Malone stood and looked at each other, inquiring in a mute way: “Is it possible that no one can say a word--a last word--for the old man?” Col. William LaFayette, big-hearted fellow that he was, arose to the emergency. Looking in the grave, at the coffin, and then passing his eyes from man to man, he knew that the task had fallen on him. He read in the faces of the others that he was expected to perform the last rites and ceremonies over the body of their departed friend. On realizing this, he said: “Stand ’round the grave, boys, and pull off your hats. Git as close as you can. “There air nobudy here--no preacher, nor weemens, or the like of that--to say nuthing, and it just won’t do to bury a man like Uncle Billy Malone without something being said; if nobudy else will say it, I will. “Here air the body of Uncle Billy Malone, and he air daid. He was as good-er man as ever lived, and you all know it. And we air every one drunk, and I would go further to remark, and to say, that if Uncle Billy were here, he’d be drunk, too. “Let’s all hope that he’s gone to the Good Place, for he was a mighty good man. That’s all. “If any of the rest of you have got anything to say, say it now, for it will be too late to-morrow.” That closed the ceremonies. The grave was filled in, and the more tender-hearted ones of the party dropped tears on the red clay that covered the old fellow’s body. It was a solemn scene, there in the snow-covered grove, near the church. Uncle Billy’s friends had remained faithful to the last. They had done the best they knew how. “RED BUCK”: WHERE I CAME BY IT