to the flippancy of the bar I should not admire; but the consistency of the reverend gentleman here attracted my notice.  I had been just listening to him while he repeated, with devotional elongation, the solemn words of the burial service; and when I heard him with the same elongation of sound, address himself to me—­“Shall I trouble you to cut up the fowl—­can I help you to some tongue, sir?” I confess that I felt tempted not to laugh, but to comment on the oddly-contrasted feelings which the same voice, thus variously exerted, inspired.

Horror-struck, as I had been, at the first mention of the unfeeling word “breakfast,” my excuse for staying was to see if others could eat.  That I should take food was quite out of the question.  But the wing of a fowl having been put on my plate, I thought it would be rudeness to reject it.  I began to eat, inwardly reflecting that my abstinence would nothing benefit those whose sufferings I had still in my memory; and improving on this reconciling thought, I presently detected myself holding my plate for a second supply.  “O sentiment!” I mentally exclaimed, “what art thou when opposed to a breakfast?”

By the time we had disposed of our first cup of tea, we had got through the pious reflections which each of us had to offer on the particular occasion which had brought us together, and conversation started in a livelier vein.  The gentleman who had assisted the ordinary, by praying with the culprits, gaily remarked to him, with a benevolent chuckle on his face, that they (meaning himself and the reverend gentleman) had succeeded in refuting the Unitarian principles which A——­ (one of the sufferers) had for some time avowed.  The look which answered this speech, reminded me, I know not why, of the organist’s comment on the organ blower’s assertion that they had played famously well.

“Ay,” said the minister, “I knew it would be so.  I told him so immediately after sentence.  But, after all, what can we say for a recantation dictated by the dread of early death?”

“Very true!” was my exclamation, as the reverend gentleman looked as if he expected me to say something.

“At any rate,” whispered a gentleman well-known in the city, with whom I had formerly done a little business in the funds, “it gives a man something of an option.”

This technical application of a favourite stock-exchange word produced a general smile round the table, and I could not help contributing to lengthen it by replying—­

“You mean, perhaps, that it gives him a call.”  But the lively sheriff, of whose witticisms I have already made honourable mention, cut me out of my share of applause altogether, as clean as a whistle, by instantly rejoining—­

“The put you mean, for, in this case, the party was going for the fall.”

Of course there was no standing this, and we all joined in the laugh.