He joined no
longer in the psalms; but Dick could hear the beads rattle through
his fingers and the prayers a-pattering between his teeth.
Yet a little, and the grey of the morning began to struggle through
the painted casements of the church, and to put to shame the
glimmer of the tapers. The light slowly broadened and brightened,
and presently through the south-eastern clerestories a flush of
rosy sunlight flickered on the walls. The storm was over; the
great clouds had disburdened their snow and fled farther on, and
the new day was breaking on a merry winter landscape sheathed in
white.
A bustle of church officers followed; the bier was carried forth to
the deadhouse, and the stains of blood were cleansed from off the
tiles, that no such ill-omened spectacle should disgrace the
marriage of Lord Shoreby. At the same time, the very ecclesiastics
who had been so dismally engaged all night began to put on morning
faces, to do honour to the merrier ceremony which was about to
follow.
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