ath in so strange a shape formed a topic of tavern discussion in
Cullerne, second only to a murder itself. Not since Mr Leveritt, the
timber-merchant, shot a barmaid at the Blandamer Arms, a generation
since, had any such dramatic action taken place on Cullerne boards. The
loafers swore over it in all its bearings as they spat upon the pavement
at the corner of the market square. Mr Smiles, the shop-walker in Rose
and Storey's general drapery mart, discussed it genteelly with the
ladies who sat before the counter on the high wicker-seated chairs.

Dr Ennefer was betrayed into ill-advised conversation while being
shaved, and got his chin cut. Mr Joliffe gave away a packet of moral
reflections gratis with every pound of sausage, and turned up the whites
of his eyes over the sin of intemperance, which had called away his poor
friend in so terrible a state of unpreparedness. Quite a crowd followed
the coffin to its last resting-place, and the church was unusually full
on the Sunday morning which followed the catastrophe. People expected a
"pulpit reference" from Canon Parkyn, and there were the additional,
though subordinate, attractions of the playing of the Dead March, and
the possibility of an amateur organist breaking down in the anthem.

Church-going, which sprung from such unworthy motives, was very properly
disappointed. Canon Parkyn would not, he said, pander to sensationalism
by any allusion in his discourse, nor could the Dead March, he
conceived, be played with propriety under such very unpleasant
circumstances. The new organist got through the service with
provokingly colourless mediocrity, and the congregation came out of
Saint Sepulchre's in a disappointed mood, as people who had been
defrauded of their rights.

Then the nine days' wonder ceased, and Mr Sharnall passed into the
great oblivion of middle-class dead. His successor was not immediately
appointed. Canon Parkyn arranged that the second master at the National
School, who had a pretty notion of music, and was a pupil of Mr
Sharnall, should be spared to fill the gap. As Queen Elizabeth, of
pious memory, recruited the privy purse by keeping in her own hand
vacant bishoprics, so the rector farmed the post of organist at Cullerne
Minster. He thus managed to effect so important a reduction in the
sordid emoluments of that office, that he was five pounds in pocket
before a year was ended.

But if the public had forgotten Mr Sharnall, Westray h