`` And what shall be the token ? '' asked the proud girl , as if her heart acknowledged a meaning in these wild words . `` This lock of hair , '' said Edith , lifting one of the dark clustering curls that lay heavily on the dead man 's brow . The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and appointed a day and hour far , far in time to come for their next meeting in that chamber . The statelier girl gave one deep look at the motionless countenance and departed , yet turned again and trembled ere she closed the door , almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon her . And Edith , too ! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight ? Scorning her own weakness , she went forth and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight , which he held between her face and his own and regarded her , as she thought , with an ugly expression of merriment . Lifting his torch on high , the slave lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion . The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps , and , bowing to the lady , passed in without a word . Years -- many years -- rolled on . The world seemed new again , so much older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their hands across the bosom of the corpse . In the interval a lonely woman had passed from youth to extreme age , and was known by all the town as the `` Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet . '' A taint of insanity had affected her whole life , but so quiet , sad and gentle , so utterly free from violence , that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had naught to do . She dwelt alone , and never came into the daylight except to follow funerals . Whenever a corpse was borne along the street , in sunshine , rain or snow , whether a pompous train of the rich and proud thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners , behind them came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her shroud . She took no place among the kindred or the friends , but stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer , and walked in the rear of the procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the house of mourning and be the shadow of affliction and see that the dead were duly buried . So long had this been her custom that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral , as much as the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself , and augured ill of the sinner 's destiny unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding like a ghost behind . Once , it is said , she affrighted a bridal-party with her pale presence , appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had been dead a year . Evil was the omen to that marriage .
Sometimes she stole forth XXXXX moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity and wedded love and virgin innocence , and every spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart were mouldering .
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