The House by the Church-Yard

it because, as I said, I write from memoranda, an awfully d

put out under the wet ‘blanket of the night,’ which impene

om one horizon to the other into one black dome of vapour, their slow but steady motion contrasting with the awful stillness of the air. There was a weight in the atmosphere, and a sort of undef

s — a dream that betokened some coming trouble — it might, to be sure, be ever so small —(it had once come with no worse result than Dr. Walsingham’s dropping

essenger a good hour awaiting his answer; and, just at two o’clock, the same messenger returned with a second letter — but this time a note sufficed for reply. ‘’Twill seem ungracious,’ said the doctor, knitting his brows over his closed folio in

enough — but it was the women’s doing — who always, upon emergencies, took the doctor’s wardrobe in hand. Old Sally, with her kind, mild, grave face, and gray locks, stood modestly behind in the hall; and pretty Lilias, his only child, gave him her parting kiss, and her last grand charge about his shoes and other exterior toggery, in the porch; and he patted her cheek with a little fond laugh, taking old John Tracy’s, the butler’s, arm. John carried a handsome horn-lante

rge-like. It was a quarter past ten, and no other sound of life or human neighbourhood was stirring. If secrecy were an object, it was well secured by the sable sky, and the steady torrent which rolled down with electric weight and perpendicularity, making all nature resound with one long hush — sh — sh — sh — sh — deluging th

incremation, and submit to an unprecedented death by drowning), there was no idle officer, or lounging waiter upon the threshold. Military and civilians were all snug in their quarters that night; and the inn, excep

tless hall doors towards the Salmon House, also dark; and so, sharp round the corner, and up to the church-yard gate, w

he edifice looked unpleasantly dim, and went off at the far end into total darkness. Zekiel Irons was a lean, reserved fellow, with a black wig and blue chin, and something shy and sinister in his phi

cost. Bob Martin thanked his reverence; the cold rheumatism in his hip was better.’ Irons, the clerk, replied, ‘he had brought two prayer-books.’ Bob averred ‘he could not be mistaken; the old lady was buried in the near-vault; though it was forty years before, he remembered it like last night. They changed her into her lead coffin in the vault — he and the undertaker together — her own servants would not put a hand to

ess — now emerging again, dim, nebulous, in the foggy light of the lanterns. When this clerical portrait came near, he was looking down, with gathered brows, upon the flags, moving his lips and nodding, as if counting them, as was his way. The doctor was thinking

curious.’ This latter was a mistake of the doctor’s, who, like other simple persons, was fond of regarding others as harmless repetitions of himself. ‘And his sojourn will be,’ he says, ‘but a matter of weeks; and the doctors mind wandered b