om London possessed by the idea, with the intimate feeling
that it was my first duty to secure, as well as I was able, the well-being
of my family, and then to return and take my post beside Adrian. The events
that immediately followed on my arrival at Windsor changed this view of
things. The plague was not in London alone, it was every where--it came
on us, as Ryland had said, like a thousand packs of wolves, howling through
the winter night, gaunt and fierce. When once disease was introduced into
the rural districts, its effects appeared more horrible, more exigent, and
more difficult to cure, than in towns. There was a companionship in
suffering there, and, the neighbours keeping constant watch on each other,
and inspired by the active benevolence of Adrian, succour was afforded, and
the path of destruction smoothed. But in the country, among the scattered
farm-houses, in lone cottages, in fields, and barns, tragedies were acted
harrowing to the soul, unseen, unheard, unnoticed. Medical aid was less
easily procured, food was more difficult to obtain, and human beings,
unwithheld by shame, for they were unbeheld of their fellows, ventured on
deeds of greater wickedness, or gave way more readily to their abject
fears.

Deeds of heroism also occurred, whose very mention swells the heart and
brings tears into the eyes. Such is human nature, that beauty and deformity
are often closely linked. In reading history we are chiefly struck by the
generosity and self-devotion that follow close on the heels of crime,
veiling with supernal flowers the stain of blood. Such acts were not
wanting to adorn the grim train that waited on the progress of the plague.

The inhabitants of Berkshire and Bucks had been long aware that the plague
was in London, in Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, York, in short, in all
the more populous towns of England. They were not however the less
astonished and dismayed when it appeared among themselves. They were
impatient and angry in the midst of terror. They would do something to
throw off the clinging evil, and, while in action, they fancied that a
remedy was applied. The inhabitants of the smaller towns left their houses,
pitched tents in the fields, wandering separate from each other careless of
hunger or the sky's inclemency, while they imagined that they avoided the
death-dealing disease. The farmers and cottagers, on the contrary, struck
with the fear of solitude, and madly desirous of medical assi