[Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
Sketches New and Old

CHAPTER V
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There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.
There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog.

Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.
In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray gloom of the starlight.

It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand.

I knew what the clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked.

I may say I was surprised.


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