United States or Tuvalu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here and there, a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.
The young man glowered almost fiercely upon his old friend. "I hear Chudleigh's boy is but a poor creature," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely. "Lady Henry doesn't expect him to live." "Why, that's the kind that always does live!" cried Delafield, with angry emphasis. "And as for Lady Henry, her imagination is a perfect charnel-house. She likes to think that everybody's dead or dying but herself.
There was no nose to speak of; indeed, the visage might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like jewels in a charnel-house.
As well look for a dropped sand on the beach, as for a living being amongst closed houses and yawning vaults; but if you will pay the poor gravediggers beforehand, I promise you, you shall have the first of a new charnel-house; it will be finished just about your time."
"Are you sure, good woman," replied the knight, "that there is any inhabitant in these ruins? For my part, I should rather suppose that you are taking me to the charnel-house of the dead."
It was all grist into his mill, and no doubt his charnel-house at the base of his silken tunnel could have borne eloquent testimony alike to his wise sagacity and his epicurean luxury. I have pictured my picnic, and the question naturally arises, what was it all about what the occasion for this celebration?
And now the crowning function, the Magnum Opus of the mystery, must take place in the Sheol of Dappah; a long procession filed from the mountain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night was dark, the moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the ground was dimly lighted by the phosphorescence of the general putrefaction.
"An hour and twenty minutes: that means any time after nine o'clock. I'm honestly sorry for you, Grantham sorry for any one that has to stay in this charnel-house of a town ten minutes after he's through. What will you do with yourself?" Loring got up, looked at his watch, and made a suggestion, hoping that Kent would fall in with it. "I don't know. Shall we go back to your rooms and sit a while?"
It received no honor or ceremonial from El Zagal, and appears to have been interred obscurely to prevent any popular sensation; and it is recorded by an ancient and faithful chronicler of the time that the body of the old monarch was deposited by two Christian captives in his osario or charnel-house.* Such was the end of the turbulent Muley Abul Hassan, who, after passing his life in constant contests for empire, could scarce gain quiet admission into the corner of a sepulchre.
"Thy head is a charnel-house, dull Dudley, but this picture of its furniture shall not suffice for me. The man who is to be my husband must have a feeling for a mother's sorrows!" "What is now getting uppermost in thy mind, Faith! Is it for me to bring back the dead to life, or to place a child that hath been lost so many years once more in the arms of its parents?" "It is.
Word Of The Day