He turned his face from those wretched
relics of mortality with a feeling of disgust, mingled with
superstition; and he found, when he had done so, that the
consciousness of the presence of these ghastly objects, though unseen
by him, rendered him more uncomfortable than even when he had his eyes
fixed upon, and reflected by, the cold, staring, lifeless eyeballs of
the deceased. Fancy also played her usual sport with him. He now
thought he heard the well-worn damask nightgown of the deceased usurer
rustle; anon, that he heard the slaughtered bravo draw up his leg, the
boot scratching the floor as if he was about to rise; and again he
deemed he heard the footsteps and the whisper of the returned ruffian
under the window from which he had lately escaped. To face the last
and most real danger, and to parry the terrors which the other class
of feelings were like to impress upon him, Nigel went to the window,
and was much cheered to observe the light of several torches
illuminating the street, and followed, as the murmur of voices
denoted, by a number of persons, armed, it would seem, with firelocks
and halberds, and attendant on Hildebrod, who (not in his fantastic
office of duke, but in that which he really possessed of bailiff of
the liberty and sanctuary of Whitefriars) was on his way to inquire
into the crime and its circumstances.
It was a strange and melancholy contrast to see these debauchees,
disturbed in the very depth of their midnight revel, on their arrival
at such a scene as this.
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