The housekeeper sent for John’s trio of business friends as soon as she discovered that the vital spark had fled. One after the other they came, and when all had arrived, a solemn and dignified conference was held. There were no friends to be sent for but the Hungerfords of Poppleton, and Tom Lynch, who was attempting to establish himself as a physician in an interior town of Ohio, though reports came to Baltimore that he was too unsteady to achieve a success. Telegraph messages were immediately sent to Mrs. Hungerford and Tom Lynch. The former, with her family, arrived in season to attend the funeral, but the despatch did not promptly reach the young physician, and he did not appear. John Hungerford went to his grave in greater state than he had ever moved in the flesh, for the three eminent merchants who managed the affair had a high regard for the proprieties of the solemn occasion. A long procession of carriages, occupied by men and women who were willing to join the brilliant funeral _cortége_ for the gloomy excitement of the scene, though they had no interest in, and only a few had any acquaintance with, the deceased, followed the plumed hearse to the cemetery, and the tomb closed upon all that was mortal of the Baltimore _millionnaire_. After the old man’s dust had been solemnly disposed of, there was an intense curiosity to ascertain what disposition he had made of his princely fortune. This was really the most interesting question connected with the life or death of the departed. Few, if any, asked what he was; all, what he had. Hardly one wanted to know what pleasant memories he had left behind him; all, the sum total of his worldly possessions. None but fanatics asked where the old man had gone; but every one, where his fortune was to go. What John Hungerford had been doing in the little back parlor for the last two years was to be made manifest. It had cost the old man fifty years of severe struggles to get his three and a half millions; it had cost him two years of diligent thought, and what struggles none could know,--it had cost him two years of hard labor, more trying, perhaps, in his age and feebleness, than the half century of toil in the vigor of his healthy life,--to give it away. The will was read. There were present at the reading only the three eminent merchants, the Hungerford family from Poppleton, and the housekeeper.