e of one of them, and when Mrs. Peter Melcombe especially begged
that the grandmother's wish respecting the bed of lilies might be
attended to, Mr. Mortimer, with evident emotion, gave orders to the
gardener that it should not be touched.

And then Sunday came, and with it a trial that the two sons had not
expected. It was announced by the churchwarden to the family, first to
the ladies at the hall, and then to the gentlemen at the inn, that Mr.
Craik was going to preach a funeral sermon. He did not wish, he said, to
take them by surprise--he felt that they would wish to know. In his
secret soul he believed that the old men would not come to hear it--he
hoped they would not, because their absence would enable him more freely
to speak of the misfortunes of the deceased.

But they did come. The manner of their coming was thought by the
congregation to be an acknowledgment that they felt their fault. They
did not look any one in the face; but with brows bent down, and eyes on
the ground, they went to the places given them in the family pew, and
when morning prayers were over and the text was given out, as still as
stones they sat and listened.

"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like
his."

The sermon was more full of eulogy than was in good taste, but the
ladies of the family did not find it so; they wept passionately--so did
many of the congregation, but the two sons, though their hands might
plainly be seen to tremble, maintained a deep, distressed immobility,
and because it was neither right to upbraid them to their faces, nor to
judge them publicly, a piece of the sermon which concerned Madam
Melcombe's sorrow, caused by their desertion, was mercifully left out.

That was the last the people saw of the brothers; they went away almost
before it was light on Monday morning, and for a long time after, their
faces, their words, and their every attitude, remained the talk of the
place.

In the meantime, John Mortimer and Valentine had a very pleasant little
excursion. As soon as they were out of the presence of their fathers,
they naturally threw off any unusual gravity of demeanour, for though
suitable to a solemn funeral, this might well pass away with it, as
their grandmother had been a total stranger to them.

John hired horses, and they rode about the country together to see the
rosy apple orchards; they inspected an old Roman town, then they went
and looked at some fine ruins, and