'
'What part was the party buried in?'
'The pauper part,' I said.
'Oh,' said he, losing suddenly his respectful tone. 'When was she
buried? I suppose it was a she by the look o' you.'
'When? I don't know the date.'
'Rather a wide order that, but there's the pauper part.' And he
pointed to a spot at some little distance, where there were no
gravestones and no shrubs. I walked across to this Desert of Poverty,
which seemed too cheerless for a place of rest. I stood and gazed at
the mounds till the black coffins underneath grew upon my mental
vision, and seemed to press upon my brain. Thoughts I had none, only
a sense of being another person.
The man came slowly towards me, and then looked meditatively into my
face. I shall never forget him. A tall, sallow, emaciated man he was,
with cheek-bones high and sharp as an American Indian's, and
straight black hair. He looked like a wooden image of Mephistopheles,
carved with a jack-knife.
'Who are you?' The words seemed to come, not from the gravedigger's
mouth, but from those piles of lamp-blacked coffins which were
searing my eyes through four feet of graveyard earth.
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