"Muffle your face in your handkerchief, miss, for Heaven's sake!"
And with bated breath they let the dead cart rumble by with its ghastly burden.
A funeral emerged from a court hard by—a funeral which was composed of the clergyman, an old man weeping over his dead, and tottering feebly after, and four negroes carrying the bier. They flitted by like phantoms, casting apathetic glances after the old man, the boatman, and the young lady who were mounting the hill to that lonely house on its brow.
They entered the grove, and with one accord paused and gazed toward the house, and listened, and looked in each others faces for encouragement. The door was ajar, the windows all open, and the fair white curtains, fluttering low adown among the climbing grapes and budding roses, were limp and yellow with nights of dew and days of rust, but not a living face looked out through the silent panes, not a sound broke the deep and breathless silence.
These men were brave men, but which of them would venture within these desolate walls where death triumphant reigned.
Suddenly Margaret slipped her hand from the lawyer's clasp, and fled like a spirit into the silent house—fear, hope, and love giving her the courage which these others could not summon.
She traversed the passages, where all was wild confusion, she looked into every room, but the drivers of the dead carts had been there before her—each bed was vacant, each chamber that used to echo to the careless jests of the soldiers was dull and lifeless as they.
She fled up the staircase, she opened another chamber-door—it was the last.
It was a wide, dim chamber, whose close-drawn curtains banished all the light, and between her and the window loomed a great white object—a bed with the hangings drawn close about it.
No breath, no sound—oh, Heaven! is he not here? Is he dead and gone forever?