a sonnet entitled “A Last Farewell,” and addressed to Julia Brown.  This he asked should be delivered to Miss Brown as soon as his corpse was discovered.  He said it might excite a pang in her bosom and induce her to cherish his memory.  Then he gave Potts his watch as a keepsake, and handed him forty dollars, with which he desired Mr. Potts to purchase a tombstone.  He said he would prefer a plain one with his simple name cut upon it, and he wanted the funeral to be as unostentatious as possible.

Potts promised to fulfill these commissions, and he suggested that he would lend Mr. Lamb a bowie-knife, with which he could slash himself up if the pistol failed.

But the suicide said that he would make sure work with the revolver, although he was much obliged for the offer all the same.  He said he would like Potts to go around in the morning and break the news as gently as possible to his unhappy mother, and to tell her that his last thought was of her.  But he particularly requested that she would not put on mourning for her erring son.

Then he said that the awful act would be performed on the beach, just below the gas-works, and he wished Potts to come out with some kind of a vehicle to bring the remains home.  If Julia came to the funeral, she was to have a seat in the carriage next to the hearse; and if she wanted his heart, it was to be given to her in alcohol.  It beat only for her.  Potts was to tell his employers at the store that he parted with them with regret, but doubtless they would find some other person more worthy of their confidence and esteem.  He said he didn’t care where he was buried, but let it be in some lonely place far from the turmoil and trouble of the world—­some place where the grass grows green and where the birds come to carol in the early spring-time.

Mr. Potts asked him if he preferred a deep or a shallow grave; but Mr. Lamb said it made very little difference—­when the spirit was gone, the mere earthly clay was of little account.  He owed seventy cents for billiards down at the saloon, and Potts was to pay that out of the money in his hands, and to request the clergyman not to preach a sermon at the cemetery.  Then he shook hands with Potts and went away to his awful doom.

The next morning Mr. Potts wrote to Julia, stopped in to tell them at the store, and nearly killed Mrs. Lamb with the intelligence.  Then he borrowed Bradley’s wagon; and taking with him the coroner, he drove out to the beach, just below the gas-works, to fetch home the mutilated corpse.  When they reached the spot, the body was not there, and Potts said he was very much afraid it had been washed away by the flood tide.  So they drove up to Keyser’s house, about half a mile from the shore, to ask if any of the folks there had heard the fatal pistol-shot or seen the body.