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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, and what my future actions were to be. In
the feeling communicated to me by the sight of one struck by the plague, I
forgot the events that had excited me so strongly in London; new and more
painful prospects, by degrees were cleared of the mist which had hitherto
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