horrible grave wherein to lie.

Meantime the driver, with an eye to business, and no time for such
nonsense as melancholy moralizing, had laid the body of the young girl
on the ground, and briskly turned his cart and dumped the remainder of
his load into the pit. Then, having flung a few handfuls of clay over
it, he unwound the sheet, and kneeling beside the body, prepared to
remove the jewels. The rays of the moon and his dark lantern fell on the
lovely, snow-white face together, and Sir Norman groaned despairingly as
he saw its death-cold rigidity. The man had stripped the rings off the
fingers, the bracelets off the arms; but as he was about to perform
the same operation toward the necklace, he was stopped by a startling
interruption enough. In his haste, the clasp entered the beautiful neck,
inflicting a deep scratch, from which the blood spouted; and at the same
instant the dead girl opened her eyes with a shrill cry. Uttering a yell
of terror, as well he might, the man sprang back and gazed at her with
horror, believing that his sacrilegious robbery had brought the dead
to life. Even the two young men-albeit, neither of them given to
nervousness nor cowardice--recoiled for an instant, and stared aghast.
Then, as the whole truth struck them, that the girl had been in a deep
swoon and not dead, both simultaneously darted forward, and forgetting
all fear of infection, knelt by her side. A pair of great, lustrous
black eyes were staring wildly around, and fixed themselves first on one
face and then on the other.

"Where am I?" she exclaimed, with a terrified look, as she strove to
raise herself on her elbow, and fell instantaneously back with a cry
of agony, as she felt for the first time the throbbing anguish of the
wound.

"You are with friends, dear lady!" said Sir Norman, in a voice quite
tremulous between astonishment and delight. "Fear nothing, for you shall
be saved."

The great black eyes turned wildly upon him, while a fierce spasm
convulsed the beautiful face.

"O, my God, I remember! I have the plague!" And, with a prolonged shriek
of anguish, that thrilled even to the hardened heart of the dead-cart
driver, the girl fell back senseless again. Sir Norman Kingsley
sprang to his feet, and with more the air of a frantic lunatic than a
responsible young English knight, caught the cold form in his arms, laid
it in the dead-cart, and was about springing into the driver's seat,
when that individual indignan