The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 328: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MURDERESS 297 agonizing, horror-stricken woman, stood the corpses of the hanged ones, with the halters around their necks. And the foremost addressed her in a voice that sounded like the hollow wind moaning through the wintry forest and mingling with the low murmurs of the withered boughs and rustling leaves. A chill more intense, more searching, more pene- trating than aught she had yet experienced, struck to the very heart’s core of the wretched Mrs. Brace, — a chill that crept throughout her form and along every limb, with the cold clammy feeling of a loathsome reptile. ‘We rise from the grave to welcome thee amongst us,”’ spoke the corpse; and its looks and its breath shot like ice shafts through the brain and the heart of the milliner. ‘‘ From those deep and silent solitudes where the worm pursues its noiseless sport have we risen to give thee the greeting of the dead. Thine hours are told, thy minutes are numbered, and while hell is yawning to engulf thy spirit, the grave is opening to receive thy body. With the world of mortals thou hast little more to do. Thou standest on the threshold of the sphere inhabited by the eternals. For thee the quenchless fire is already raging, for thee the undying worm is sharpen- ing its sting. A little while, and that form will be rigid, those limbs will be stark, those features fixed in death; and the earth will rattle down upon thy coffin-lid, and the huge stone will be set over thy grave, and thou wilt be added to the number of the doomed that sleep beneath Newgate pave- ment.” “And the worm shall prey upon thy flesh,” spoke the second corpse, whose stony looks and chilling breath were sufficient to freeze all in a moment the hottest blood that ever circled in the human veins; ‘‘ and even in the very crave shalt thou have a sensation and a feeling that will cause thee to experience all its dreadful gloom. Yes, and thou shalt feel too that thou art imprisoned in a narrow coffin; thou shalt know the stifling, suffocating oppressiveness of that narrow home. Thou shalt long to breathe, thou shalt yearn to throw off that sense of choking and strangulation which will feel like a tremendous stone upon your breast and like pieces of lead upon your mouth and nostrils; thou wilt concentrate all thine energies in the endeavour to put forth one long, deep respiration, and thou wilt not be able.” ‘““ No, and thou wilt feel the worms creeping over thee,’’ CORnNICLOOKS (S©)