Then, still mounting the stair, they came to the bed-chambers.

From one of these they retreated hastily, since on entering it hundreds of flies buzzing in a corner advised them that something lay there which they did not wish to see.
"Let us be going.

I grow sick," exclaimed Hugh.
But Dick, who had the ears of a fox, held up his hand and said: "Hark! I hear a voice." Following the sound, he led his master down two long corridors that ended in a chapel.

There, lying before the altar, they found a man clad in a filthy priest's robe, a dying man who still had the strength to cry for help or mercy, although in truth he was wasted to a skeleton, since the plague which had taken him was of the most lingering sort.

Indeed, little seemed to be left of him save his rolling eyes, prominent nose and high cheekbones covered with yellow parchment that had been skin, and a stubbly growth of unshaven hair.
Dick scanned him.