Children , it will haunt me night and day till I tell you . '' `` What is it , mother ? '' cried the husband and wife at once . Then the old woman , with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round the fire , informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years before -- a nice linen shroud , a cap with a muslin ruff , and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding-day . But this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her . It used to be said in her younger days that if anything were amiss with a corpse -- if only the ruff were not smooth or the cap did not set right -- the corpse , in the coffin and beneath the clods , would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it . The bare thought made her nervous . `` Do n't talk so , grandmother , '' said the girl , shuddering . `` Now , '' continued the old woman , with singular earnestness , yet smiling strangely at her own folly , `` I want one of you , my children , when your mother is dressed and in the coffin , -- I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face . Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself and see whether all 's right ? '' `` Old and young , we dream of graves and monuments , '' murmured the stranger-youth . `` I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking and they , unknown and undistinguished , are to be buried together in the ocean , that wide and nameless sepulchre ? '' For a moment the old woman 's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night , rising like the roar of a blast , had grown broad , deep and terrible before the fated group were conscious of it . The house and all within it trembled ; the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken , as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump . Young and old exchanged one wild glance and remained an instant pale , affrighted , without utterance or power to move . Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips : `` The slide ! The slide ! '' The simplest words must intimate , but not portray , the unutterable horror of the catastrophe . The victims rushed from their cottage and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot , where , in contemplation of such an emergency , a sort of barrier had been reared . Alas !
they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway XXXXX destruction .
at before from like of that till whether with within