Barker and the sheriff were sitting beside me when I had finished reading the letter aloud, and while I was hurriedly dressing, I heard the sheriff say to Barker that after I left the jail the evening before, Jo fell in a heap on the floor, where he remained a long while, but at length recovered his composure, and stood looking out of the window in the direction I had taken until long after the night had come on. Later in the evening he pitied his lonely condition so much that he went in to sit awhile with him, but he had little to say, and showed a disposition to retire early. In the morning he remembered his strange agitation of the night before, and, opening the cell door soon after, he saw him lying on his bed, covered with a white sheet. Going in he found him dead, and dressed for burial, lying on his back, with his hands, in which was clutched the letter addressed to me, folded across his breast. He had not even told his wife of the discovery, so that in the minds of the people Jo Erring was still alive. We went to the jail together, and, admitting ourselves to the room where the body lay, decided what to do. It was agreed that a coroner’s jury should be summoned from among Jo’s friends, who would hold an inquest immediately, after which we would take the body to Fairview for burial. Fortunately we found a number of his friends in town, among them Theodore Meek and Lytle Biggs, and, summoning them to the jail, they first heard of the death there. After we were all inside, I read the letter to them, and as none of them wished to look at the face after listening to what Jo had written, it was agreed that the coroner, who was a physician, should examine the body alone, and that the verdict should be in accordance with his discoveries. The verdict was death from poison, administered by his own hands, and we all signed it. By the middle of the afternoon the Sheriff and his assistant had the body arranged in a neat burial case which Barker and I had procured, and, a messenger having been sent ahead to dig the grave and notify Agnes, at three o’clock the little procession left the jail yard for Fairview. Barker and I led the way with a light wagon, in which was the coffin, and a half dozen other vehicles followed, carrying a few people from town, and those of the Fairview men who had been on the jury. There was a great crowd present when we drove away, and as we passed down the street, a great many women and children came out of the different doors with offerings of flowers, which they either tossed to me or laid on the casket. Owing to the slow pace at which we travelled, we did not come in sight of Fairview church until near dark, and just as the steeple appeared, there was a single stroke of the great bell. This continued at intervals until twenty-six strokes had been tolled, when it ceased entirely, which was quite right, as the deceased would not have been twenty-seven years old for several months.