By this fantastic piece of description, and more in the same style, I
intended to throw a ghostly glimmer round the reader, so that his
imagination might view the town through a medium that should take off its
every-day aspect, and make it a proper theatre for so wild a scene as the
final one. Amid this unearthly show, the wretched brother and sister
were represented as setting forth, at midnight, through the gleaming
streets, and directing their steps to a graveyard, where all the dead had
been laid from the first corpse in that ancient town, to the murdered man
who was buried three days before. As they went, they seemed to see the
wizard gliding by their sides, or walking dimly on the path before them.
But here I paused, and gazed into the faces of my two fair auditors, to
judge whether, even on the hill where so many had been brought to death
by wilder tales than this, I might venture to proceed. Their bright eyes
were fixed on me; their lips apart. I took courage, and led the fated
pair to a new made grave, where for a few moments, in the bright and
silent midnight, they stood alone. But suddenly there was a multitude of
people among the graves.
Each family tomb had given up its inhabitants, who, one by one, through
distant years, had been borne to its dark chamber, but now came forth and
stood in a pale group together.
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