wrinkles and infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens
of her own decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them in
youth, and now in joyless age she felt that some withered partner
should request her hand and all unite in a dance of death to the music
of the funeral-bell.

While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe
as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full
in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid
stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the
laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the
altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre
appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomy
pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
shroud.

No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like
aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all
else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that
seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the
air while he spoke.

"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips. "The hearse is ready; the
sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be
married, and then to our coffins!"

How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the
ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,