the time mentioned, and then learnt all
that had taken place on the previous day, and all that was known of the
appointment Ralph had made with the brothers; which was for that night;
and for the better understanding of which it will be requisite to
return and follow his own footsteps from the house of the twin brothers.
Therefore, we leave Nicholas somewhat reassured by the restored kindness
of their manner towards him, and yet sensible that it was different from
what it had been (though he scarcely knew in what respect): so he was
full of uneasiness, uncertainty, and disquiet.

CHAPTER 62

Ralph makes one last Appointment--and keeps it

Creeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping with his
hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a blind man; and
looking often over his shoulder while he hurried away, as though he were
followed in imagination or reality by someone anxious to question or
detain him; Ralph Nickleby left the city behind him, and took the road
to his own home.

The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds, furiously
and fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that seemed
to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, but
lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. He
often looked back at this, and, more than once, stopped to let it pass
over; but, somehow, when he went forward again, it was still behind him,
coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral train.

He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground--a dismal place, raised a
few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low
parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot,
where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy growth, to tell
that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots in
the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts and drunken
hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the living by a
little earth and a board or two--lay thick and close--corrupting in body
as they had in mind--a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by
jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed
there every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a
grisly family, all these dear departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy
clergyman who did his task so speedily when they were hidden in the
ground!

As he passed here, Ra