So I am tempted, not like Mamie, by one, but by a half dozen devils. I say: “Get thee behind me, satans.” At this, some get behind, while others get before me. The spirit of adventure, or something else, catches hold of the lapels of my coat. Now they push and pull and shove and drag me in, until finally I wake up on the inside of a living tomb. Going in some distance from the gate and around one or two houses, I see a great number of lepers, lying on the ground, sunning themselves. A few of the miserable creatures are sitting up. Seeing me, they make a strange and hideous noise. This arouses the others. They rise—three here, four there, a half dozen, yea, a dozen, yonder—still they rise. It looks almost as if judgment had come; as if the tombs are opening and the graves are giving up their dead skeletons. They form a semi-circle about me. Ah, what a ghastly sight! Men, women and children in all stages of the leprosy. Some of them look more like fiends than human beings. Skin and flesh gone from their hands and arms, from their brows and cheeks! The working of their jaw-bones can be seen, as they vainly attempt to talk. Here they are—gums swollen, teeth gone, palates fallen, one eye, or one ear missing. One finger—two fingers—may be all the fingers gone from one hand, or, perchance, the hand itself is off at the wrist, or the arm at the elbow. What arms and limbs and fingers they have, are frequently gnarled and twisted like grape-vines. They are close enough. Rushing my right hand into my pocket, I strew the coin far and wide like seed wheat. The poor diseased creatures, with pewter plates in hand, hobble around here and there as best they can, pushing and shoving each other right and left, each trying to get all the coins and to keep his neighbor from getting any. Stepping forward, I strew out more coin and then recede. On come the victims of this loathsome disease. Oh, what a ghastly sight! Flesh gone, bones exposed and all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from the face and body, joints decaying and dropping away,—human beings coming unjointed and falling to pieces! On they come, until I find myself half surrounded by hideous, dreamlike spectres! horrible hobgoblins! living corpses! walking skeletons! green-eyed monsters! fiery-eyed fiends! coming up, crowding up around me, thrusting out their long arms and bony fingers, apparently eager and anxious to hug me, like a phantom, to their loathsome and rotting bosoms!