It used to be said, in her younger days, that if
anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth,
or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the
clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
thought made her nervous.
"Don't talk so, grandmother!" said the girl, shuddering.
"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet
smiling strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children-
when your mother is dressed and in the coffin- I want one of you to
hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a
glimpse at myself, and see whether all's right?"
"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
stranger youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is
sinking, and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried
together in the ocean- that wide and nameless sepulchre?"
For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the
minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the
roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated
group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled;
the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful
sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one
wild glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without
utterance, or power to move.
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