seem in your dead to see differences beyond my perception!" I
ventured to remark.

"None of those you see," he answered, "are in truth quite dead yet, and
some have but just begun to come alive and die. Others had begun to die,
that is to come alive, long before they came to us; and when such are
indeed dead, that instant they will wake and leave us. Almost every
night some rise and go. But I will not say more, for I find my words
only mislead you!--This is the couch that has been waiting for you," he
ended, pointing to one of the three.

"Why just this?" I said, beginning to tremble, and anxious by parley to
delay.

"For reasons which one day you will be glad to know," he answered.

"Why not know them now?"

"That also you will know when you wake."

"But these are all dead, and I am alive!" I objected, shuddering.

"Not much," rejoined the sexton with a smile, "--not nearly enough!
Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are not
death!"

"The place is too cold to let one sleep!" I said.

"Do these find it so?" he returned. "They sleep well--or will soon. Of
cold they feel not a breath: it heals their wounds.--Do not be a coward,
Mr. Vane. Turn your back on fear, and your face to whatever may come.
Give yourself up to the night, and you will rest indeed. Harm will not
come to you, but a good you cannot foreknow."

The sexton and I stood by the side of the couch, his wife, with the
candle in her hand, at the foot of it. Her eyes were full of light, but
her face was again of a still whiteness; it was no longer radiant.

"Would they have me make of a charnel-house my bed-chamber?" I cried
aloud. "I will not. I will lie abroad on the heath; it cannot be colder
there!"

"I have just told you that the dead are there also,

'Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa,'"

said the librarian.

"I will NOT," I cried again; and in the compassing dark, the two gleamed
out like spectres that waited on the dead; neither answered me; each
stood still and sad, and looked at the other.

"Be of good comfort; we watch the flock of the great shepherd," said the
sexton to his wife.

Then he turned to me.

"Didst thou not find the air of the place pure and sweet when thou
enteredst it?" he asked.

"Yes; but oh, so cold!" I answered.

"Then know," he returned, and his voice was stern, "that thou who
callest thyself alive, hast brought into this chamber the odours of