made them indifferent to
everything. I lingered, then, in a distant alley as the evening began
to fall, and when the bell rung out its dismal summons, I trembled to
think--was it the last time I should ever hear it! It was a strange
thrill of mingled hope and terror; Where should I be the next evening at
that hour? Free, and at liberty,--a wanderer wherever fancy might lead
me, or the occupant of some narrow bed beneath the earth, sleeping the
sleep that knows no waking? And, if so, who could less easily be missed
than he who had neither friend, nor family, nor fortune. I felt that my
departure, like that of some insignificant guest, would meet notice from
none: not one to ask what became of him? when did he leave us? to whom
did he say farewell?

If there was something unspeakably sad in the solitude of such a
fate, there was that also which nerved the heart by a sense of
Self-sufficiency,--the very brother of Independence; and this thought
gave me courage as I looked over the grassy embankment, and peered into
the gloomy fosse, which now, in the indistinct light, seemed far deeper
than ever. A low, marshy tract, undrained and uninhabitable, surrounded
the "Lazaretto" for miles; and if this insalubrious neighborhood
assisted in keeping up the malaria of fever, it compensated, on the
other hand, by interposing an unpopulated district between the sick and
the healthy.

These dreary wastes, pathless and untrodden, were a kind of fabulous
region among the patients for all kind of horrors, peopled, as the fancy
of each dictated, by the spirits of departed "Leperos," by venomous
serpents and cobras, or by escaped galley-slaves, who led a life of
rapine and murder. The flitting jack-o'-lantern that often skimmed along
the surface, the wild cry of the plover, the dreary night wind sighing
over miles of plain, aided these superstitions, and convinced many whose
stubborn incredulity demanded corroboration from the senses. As for
myself, if very far from crediting the tales I had so often listened to,
the theme left its character of gloom upon my mind, and it was with a
cold shudder that I strained my eyes over the wide distance, from which
a heavy exhalation was already rising. Determined to derive comfort
from every source, I bethought me that the misty fog would assist my
concealment, as if it were worth while to pursue me through a region
impregnated with all the vapors of disease! The bell had ceased, the
bang of the grea