daylight, except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne
along the street, in sunshine, rain, or snow, whether a pompous train,
of the rich and proud, thronged after it, or few and humble were the
mourners, behind them came the lonely woman, in a long, white garment,
which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the
kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral
prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession, as one whose earthly
charge it was to haunt the house of mourning, and be the shadow of
affliction, and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this
been her custom, that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of
every funeral, as much as the coffin pall, or the very corpse itself,
and augured ill of the sinner's destiny, unless the "Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet" came gliding, like a ghost, behind. Once, it is said,
she affrighted a bridal party, with her pale presence, appearing
suddenly in the illuminated hall, just as the priest was uniting a
false maid to a wealthy man, before her lover had been dead a year.
Evil was the omen to that marriage! Sometimes she stole forth by
moonlight, and visited the graves of venerable Integrity, and wedded
Love, and virgin Innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a kind
and faithful heart were mouldering. Over the hillocks of those favored
dead would she stretch out her arms, with a gesture, as if she were
scattering seeds; and many believed that she brought them from the
garden of Paradise; for the graves, which she had visited, were green
beneath the snow, and covered with sweet flowers from April to
November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the
tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful, and fantastic
life, till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
wondered how the dead had ever been buried, or mourners had endured
their grief, without the "Old Maid in the Winding Sheet."