his eyes taking in every detail of
the scene.

As he reached the dead around the margin of the stream, he paused and
looked upon the faces he had known so well in life, then turning to his
two followers, he said:

"I trow these be all dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be
any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any
sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own
safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered
to lie here longer, every soul in this place will perish!"

Glad enough to turn his eyes from the terrible sight without, Raymond
hurried past to the cluster of dwelling places beyond, and entering the
first of these himself, signed to Roger to go into the second. He had
some slight difficulty in pushing open the door, not because it was
fastened, but owing to some encumbrance behind. When, however, he
succeeded in forcing his way in, he found that the encumbrance was
nothing more or less than the body of a woman lying dead along the floor
of the tiny room. Upon a bed in the corner two children were lying,
smiling as if in sleep, but both stiff and cold, the livid tokens of the
terrible malady visible upon their little bodies, though the end seemed
to have been painless. No other person was in the house, and Raymond,
drawing a covering over the children as they lay, turned from the house
again with a shudder of compassionate sorrow. Outside he met Roger
coming forth with a look of awe upon his face.

"There be five souls within you door," he said -- "an old woman, her two
sons and two daughters. But they are all dead and cold. I misdoubt me if
we find one alive in the place."

"We must try farther and see," answered Raymond, his face full of the
wondering consternation of so terrible a discovery; and by mutual
consent they proceeded in their task together. There was something so
unspeakably awful in going about alone in a veritable city of the dead.

And such indeed might this place be called. Roger was fearfully right in
his prediction. Each house entered showed its number of victims to the
destroyer, but not one of these victims was living to receive comfort or
help from the ministrations of those who had come amongst them. And not
man alone had suffered; upon the dumb beasts too had the scourge fallen:
for when Roger suddenly bethought him that the creatures would want
tendance in the absence of their owners, and had gon