suffering, and the personage who now confronted him had a face so
calm and seriously impassive that it might have been taken for
that of one newly dead, from whose lineaments all traces of
earthly passion had forever been smoothed away.

"Art thou condemned to die, or dost thou seek an escape from
death?" The question had, or seemed to have, a curious
significance,--it reiterated itself almost noisily in his ears,--
his mind was troubled by vague surmises and dreary forebodings,--
speech was difficult to him, and his lips quivered pathetically,
when he at last found force to frame his struggling thoughts into
language.

"Escape from death!" he murmured, gazing wildly around as he
spoke, on the vast skeleton crowd that encircled him.. "Old man,
dost thou also talk of dream-like impossibilities? Wilt thou also
maintain a creed of hope when naught awaits us but despair? Art
thou fooled likewise with the glimmering Soul-mirage of a never-
to-be-realized future? ... Escape from death? ... How?--and where!
Art not these dry and vacant forms sufficiently eloquent of the
all-omnipotence of Decay?" ... and he caught his unknown companion
almost fiercely by the long robe, while a sound that was half a
sob and half a sigh came from his aching throat.. "Lo you, how
emptily they stare upon us! ... how frozen-piteous is their smile!
... Poor, poor frail shapes! ... nay!--who would think these
hollow shells of bone had once been men! Men with strong hearts,
warm-flowing blood, and throbbing pulses, . . men of thought and
action, who maybe did most nobly bear themselves in life upon the
earth, and yet are now forgotten, . . men--ah, great Heaven! can it
be that these most rueful, loathly things have loved, and hoped,