The summer of 1859, according to Mr. Richardson, was extremely unhealthy. Yellow fever and dysentery were raging. What a sickly season meant I could not guess; for, in those days, I never read a newspaper, and the city traffic, to all appearance, was much as usual. On Mr. Speake’s face, however, I noticed lines of suffering; and one day he was so ill that he could not attend to business. Three or four days later, he was dead; and a message came from the widow that I should visit her, at her home, at the corner of Girod and Carondelet Streets. She was now in a state of terrible distress, and, clad in heavy mourning, she impressed me with very sombre thoughts. It comforted her to hear how sensible we all were of her loss; and then she communicated to me her reasons for desiring my presence. Through her husband she had been made aware of my personal history, and, on account of the interest it had excited in her, she had often induced her husband to tell her every incident at the store. She proceeded to reveal to me the flattering opinion he had formed of me, in terms that augmented my grief; and, as a mark of special favour, I was invited to stay in the house until after the funeral. That night, I was asked to watch the dead, a duty of which I was wholly unaware before. The body rested in a splendid open coffin, covered with muslin, but the ghastliness of death was somewhat relieved by the Sunday costume in which the defunct merchant was clothed. When the traffic of the streets had ceased, and the silence of the night had fallen on the city, the shadows in the ill-lit room grew mysterious. About midnight, I dozed a little, but suddenly woke up with an instinctive feeling that the muslin had moved! I sprang to my feet, and memories of spectral tales were revived. Was it an illusion, begotten of fear? Was Mr. Speake really dead? There was, at that moment, another movement, and I prepared to give the alarm; but a sacrilegious ‘meow’ betrayed the character of the ghost! A second later, it was felled by a bolster; and, in its haste to escape, the cat entangled its claws in the muslin, and tore and spat in a frenzy; but this was the means of saving me from the necessity of chasing the wretched animal along the corridors, for, as it was rushing through the door, I caught the veil. The next day, a long procession wound through the streets towards the cemetery.[4] The place of interment was surrounded by a high wall, which contained several square tablets, commemorative, as I supposed, of the dead lying in the earth; but I was much shocked when I learned that, behind each tablet, was a long narrow cell wherein bodies were corrupting. One of these cells had just been opened, and was destined for the body of my late employer; but, unfortunately for my feelings, not far off lay, huddled in a corner, the relics of mortality which had occupied it previously, and which had been ruthlessly displaced.