The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds furiously and fast before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that seemed to follow him; not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. He often looked back at this, and more than once stopped to let it pass over, but somehow, when he went forward again it was still behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up like a shadowy funeral train.
He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground—a dismal place raised a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low parapet wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frowsy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here in truth they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two — lay thick and close—corrupting in body as they had in mind; a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all those dear departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who did his task so speedily when they were hidden in the ground! As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of a jury long before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat; and that he was buried in this place. He could not tell how he came to recollect it now, when he had so often passed and never thought about him, or how it was that he felt an interest in the circumstance, but he did both, and stopping, and clasping the iron railings with his hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might be his grave. While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise of shouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others, who were remonstrating with them and urging them to go home in quiet. They were in high good-humour, and one of them, a little, weazen, hump -backed man, began to dance. He was a grotesque, fantastic figure, and the few by-standers laughed. Ralph himself was moved to mirth, and echoed the laugh of one who stood near and who looked round in his face. When they had passed on and he was left alone again, he resumed his speculation with a new kind of interest, for he recollected that the last person who had seen the suicide alive had left him very merry, and he remembered how strange he and the other jurors had thought that at the time.
He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves, but he conjured up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and how he looked, and what had led him to do it, all of which he recalled with ease. By dint of dwelling upon this theme, he carried the impression with him when he went away, as he remembered when a child to have had frequently before him the figure of some goblin he had once seen chalked upon a door. But as he drew nearer and nearer home he forgot it again, and began to think how very dull and solitary the house would be inside.
This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached his own door, he could hardly make up his mind to turn the key and open it—when he had done that and gone into the passage, he felt as though to
