ghts it does not follow that there should have been palms in Judaea,
because the Romans put them on a medal, any more than that there should
be unicorns in England because we represent them on our coins. However,
all this is a digression: we must return to our dead men. There were
sixteen or seventeen of them, all stiff and stark, lying in the court,
nicely wrapped up in their shrouds, like parcels ready to be sent off to
the other world: but at the end of the row lay one man in a brown dress;
he was one of the lower class--a muleteer, perhaps, a strong, well-made
man; but he was not in a shroud. He had died fighting, and there he lay
with his knees drawn up, his right arm above his head, and in his hand
the jacket of another man, which could not now be released from his
grasp, so tightly had his strong hand been clenched in the
death-struggle. This figure took a strong hold on my imagination; there
was something wild and ghastly in its appearance, different from the
quiet attitude of the other victims of the fight in which I also had
been engaged. It put me in mind of all manner of horrible old stories of
ghosts and goblins with which my memory was well stored; and I went to
bed with my head so occupied by these traditions of gloom and ignorance
that I could not sleep, or if I did for awhile, I woke up again and
still went on thinking of the old woman of Berkeley, and the fire-king,
and the stories in Scott's 'Discovery of Witchcraft,' and the 'Hierarchy
of the Blessed Aungelles,' and Caxton's 'Golden Legende'--all books
wherein I delighted to pore, till I could not help getting out of bed
again to have another look at the ghastly regiment in the court below.

I leant against the heavy stone mullions of the window, which was
barred, but without glass, and gazed I know not how long. There they all
were, still and quiet; some in the full moonlight, and some half
obscured by the shadow of the buildings. In the morning I had walked
with them, living men, such as I was myself, and now how changed they
were! Some of them I had spoken to, as they lived in the same court with
me, and I had taken an interest in their occupations: now I would not
willingly have touched them, and even to look at them was terrible! What
little difference there is in appearance between the same men asleep and
dead! and yet what a fearful difference in fact, not to themselves only,
but to those who still remained alive to look upon them! Whilst I was