CHAPTER II.

THE NAMELESS COFFIN.


Three vehicles with flambleaux, and the clang and snorting of horses
came close to the church porch, and there appeared suddenly, standing
within the disc of candle-light at the church door, before one would
have thought there was time, a tall, very pale, and peculiar looking
young man, with very large, melancholy eyes, and a certain cast of evil
pride in his handsome face.

John Tracy lighted the wax candles which he had brought, and Bob Martin
stuck them in the sockets at either side of the cushion, on the ledge of
the pew, beside the aisle, where the prayer-book lay open at 'the burial
of the dead,' and the rest of the party drew about the door, while the
doctor was shaking hands very ceremoniously with that tall young man,
who had now stepped into the circle of light, with a short, black mantle
on, and his black curls uncovered, and a certain air of high breeding in
his movements. 'He reminded me painfully of him who is gone, whom we
name not,' said the doctor to pretty Lilias, when he got home; he has
his pale, delicately-formed features, with a shadow of his evil
passions too, and his mother's large, sad eyes.'

And an elderly clergyman, in surplice, band, and white wig, with a hard,
yellow, furrowed face, hovered in, like a white bird of night, from the