Don't talk; I feel in no mood for it just at
present."
Ormiston smiled to himself, and did not talk, accordingly; and in
silence the two friends followed the gloomy dead-cart. A faint
young moon, pale and sickly, was struggling dimly through drifts
of dark clouds, and lighted the lonesome, dreary streets with a
wan, watery glimmer. For weeks, the weather had been brilliantly
fine - the days all sunshine, the nights all moonlight; but now
Ormiston, looking up at the troubled face of the sky, concluded
mentally that the Lord Mayor had selected an unpropitious night
for the grand illumination. Sir Norman, with his eyes on the
pest-cart, and the long white figure therein, took no heed of
anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath, and strode
along in dismal silence till they reached, at last, their
journey's end.
As the cart stopped the two young men approached the edge of the
plague-pit, and looked in with a shudder. Truly it was a
horrible sight, that heaving, putrid sea of corruption; for the
bodies of the miserable victims were thrown in in cartfuls, and
only covered with a handful of earth and quicklime.
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