The lips of the
corpse, up-stairs were scarcely whiter than those that kept working and
muttering nervously close by my shoulder, as I sat at my ghastly task. I
was right glad when all was ended, and I had escaped from the small,
close room, where the air seemed heavy with the savor of blood. All that
day, there lay upon the prison-house a weight and a gloom, that came not
from the murky, windless sky; the few faces that showed themselves in
the yard looked more dark and sullen than ever; and men, gathering in
knots instead of pacing to and fro, murmured or whispered eagerly. My
unlucky head chanced to be more troublesome than usual; altogether, I
cannot look back upon a more depressing evening.
About noon on the following day, a tawdry coffin of polished elm, beaded
and plated wherever there was room for a scrap of silvered metal, was
laid on chairs in the prison yard; and, soon, all those who had access
to that part of the building gathered round it--listening, uncovered, to
the scanty rites, which the Old Capitol concedes to prisoners released
by that Power, in presence of whose claims the _habeas corpus_ is never
suspended. A tall, lank-haired man, looking more like an undertaker than
a divine of any denomination, read straight through, without a syllable
of preface, the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the
Corinthians, and then, kneeling down, began a rambling, extemporaneous
prayer, the main object of which seemed to be, to address the Deity by
as many periphrastic adjurations as possible.
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