Here she paused, and heaving a deep breath, walked more leisurely forward, drawing her veil closer, and folding the cloak over her garments more resolutely as she approached the open grounds again. As she came forth, the moon had waded half through the bank of clouds, that had overwhelmed it for a moment, and began to pour its faint silver along their edges, a sight beautiful to look upon, but very repulsive to the woman, who wanted no radiance and could expect no beauty on the dark path she had begun to tread. Resolved to be in advance of the threatened illumination, she darted in a slanting direction across a range of garden beds, that lay, a mass of trodden mud and decaying vegetable stumps, between her and the southern wall. Again she was in safety, though the moon had rolled forth into the clear of the sky once more, and all around was dimly illuminated. She stood in the shadow cast by a low, stone building, half buried behind heaps of coal, empty barrels, and all sorts of refuse lumber that had been allowed to accumulate in that portion of the grounds. Another might have trembled and shrunk back appalled from the position in which this woman found herself. It was late at night, and she stood in the very presence of death. The atmosphere was heavy and so oppressive, that even in the clear cold of the night, a faintness crept over her, not from fear, not from any over-excitement of the nerves, but purely from the unwholesome air that she breathed. She knew that the low stone building was heaped with the dead, prepared for burial with such scant care as the pauper receives. She knew, also, that there was an epidemic in the hospital, and that this store-house of mortality was unusually crowded; but this gave her no uneasiness, and she shook off the sickness that oppressed her, with a sort of scorn, as if she and death had become too familiar for him to take such liberties with her. The effect which habit produces upon a coarse nature, was repulsively visible here. The woman stood within a narrow path, over which the dead-house flung its repulsive shadow. On the other side the moonbeams fell, grim and ghastly, revealing double rows of rough pine coffins, lifted endwise, and arranged in hideous proximity, so far as the dim light would permit her to see. Thus between these hollow receptacles prepared for the dead, and death itself, the woman walked, the moonlight revealing the suggestive horror on one hand, while a dense shadow and a thick wall of stone shut out the real horror close by.