Vol.1 f.021 recto

distinctness:
"-- Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener. The rest stopped behind up in London, and were to follow
next day. It happened that that night, an old gentleman who lived
at Chigwell Row, and had long been poorly, deceased,
and an order came to me at half after twelve o'clock at night to go and toll the passing-bell."
There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to have turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.
"It was was a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However, I wasn't unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up (for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand and