Blue trousers and brown socks completed his
attire, if we can talk so of the dead. He had a horrid look of a
waxwork. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and
mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of
speech. The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and
surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for
some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow it in
amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a
lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves
along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst
of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the
ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the
platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A
sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now
withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow
with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night)
drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled
with quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some
oppression, broke at once into a sound of whispered speech.
My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I
found my tongue with difficulty.
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