left them, and hurried on. I soon arrived at the hut: the door was
ajar. I entered, and one glance assured me that its former inhabitant was
no more--he lay on a heap of straw, cold and stiff; while a pernicious
effluvia filled the room, and various stains and marks served to shew the
virulence of the disorder.

I had never before beheld one killed by pestilence. While every mind was
full of dismay at its effects, a craving for excitement had led us to
peruse De Foe's account, and the masterly delineations of the author of
Arthur Mervyn. The pictures drawn in these books were so vivid, that we
seemed to have experienced the results depicted by them. But cold were the
sensations excited by words, burning though they were, and describing the
death and misery of thousands, compared to what I felt in looking on the
corpse of this unhappy stranger. This indeed was the plague. I raised his
rigid limbs, I marked the distortion of his face, and the stony eyes lost
to perception. As I was thus occupied, chill horror congealed my blood,
making my flesh quiver and my hair to stand on end. Half insanely I spoke
to the dead. So the plague killed you, I muttered. How came this? Was the
coming painful? You look as if the enemy had tortured, before he murdered
you. And now I leapt up precipitately, and escaped from the hut, before
nature could revoke her laws, and inorganic words be breathed in answer
from the lips of the departed.

On returning through the lane, I saw at a distance the same assemblage of
persons which I had left. They hurried away, as soon as they saw me; my
agitated mien added to their fear of coming near one who had entered within
the verge of contagion.

At a distance from facts one draws conclusions which appear infallible,
which yet when put to the test of reality, vanish like unreal dreams. I had
ridiculed the fears of my countrymen, when they related to others; now that
they came home to myself, I paused. The Rubicon, I felt, was passed; and it
behoved me well to reflect what I should do on this hither side of disease
and danger. According to the vulgar superstition, my dress, my person, the
air I breathed, bore in it mortal danger to myself and others. Should I
return to the Castle, to my wife and children, with this taint upon me? Not
surely if I were infected; but I felt certain that I was not--a few hours
would determine the question--I would spend these in the forest, in
reflection on what was to come, a