The old gentleman’s hilarity attracted quite a little crowd round the window, and Mrs. Dibble was excited into such a terrible rage, that she flung her reticule at him and knocked his hat off, to the immense delight of the bystanders. Bales roared with laughter, as Mrs. Dibble screamed and vociferated at the humorous gentleman upon whom she had turned the laugh so vigorously. “Here, none of this,--none of this,” said the guard, pitching the reticule back into the carriage and giving the signal for departure. Screech went the whistle of the engine, and the train moved off amidst roars of laughter at the gentleman whose wig had fallen off with his hat. The passengers were looking out all along the train, and Mrs. Dibble suddenly seeing the humour of the whole thing, and the old man’s difficulty with his false hair, began to laugh too; and Mr. Bales telling the story afterwards, said he certainly never laughed so much in his life. * * * * * Meanwhile the remains of Richard Tallant were being buried; buried in the same tomb where the father lay in that old church near Barton. Earl Verner had desired that the obsequies might be performed with all decency and respect, seeing that whatever the dead man might have been, he was his wife’s brother. So Lionel Hammerton and Arthur Phillips had attended with the Earl, and the body was buried with due solemnity. What a termination to the ambition of Christopher Tallant! What an end to all that pride of wealth!--all those years of hard work, of toil and anxiety in the father’s younger days; all those lessons of thrift, of energy, of industry, learnt in the north countrie; all that heaping up of riches: here was the final scene. Father and son lay together, the one a broken-hearted man, the other a bankrupt in purse and reputation, with a murderer’s bullet in his brain!--the son of that London wife whom Christopher Tallant had taken down to Avon-side in those days of his early manhood. Here they lay together--the proud dead father and his disinherited son: here they lay with their dead hopes, tenants of a dishonoured grave! They who should have been living in honour and high repute, assisting to govern the destinies of a nation. A fine, generous, hospitable, manly fellow that proud merchant had been, hating anything and everything that was dishonourable in a monetary sense, yet gauging everything by a simple golden standard; he had carried his just anger at his son’s misconduct into the grave, but there lay the son by his side, quiet enough now. It had been a subject of considerable discussion at Montem Castle before the funeral, whether Richard Tallant should be buried in the family vault, and Lord Verner had overruled all objections with his arguments in favour of this interment. He was the last male representative of the race, and it was not for them to carry further that awful retribution which had befallen him; and so, as we