eings thus shut up, when the watchers who were told off to guard them
had fled in terror, it was hard to imagine; and whilst the Father
responded to the calls of those who required spiritual assistance at the
last dread hour, Raymond beckoned to Roger to follow him in his
visitation to those places where the distemper had first showed itself,
and where people had hoped to confine it by closing the houses and
letting none go forth.

The terribly deadly nature of the malady was well exemplified by the
condition of these houses. Scarce ten living souls were found in them,
and of these almost all were reduced to the last extremity either by
disease or hunger; for none had been nigh them, and they had no strength
to try to make their wants known.

Raymond had the satisfaction of seeing some amongst these wretched
beings revive somewhat under his ministrations. It was not in every case
the real distemper from which they suffered; in not a few the patients
had sunk only from fright and the misery of feeling themselves shut away
from their fellows. Whenever any persons ailed anything in those days,
it was at once supposed that the Black Death was upon them, and they
were shunned and abhorred by all their friends and kindred. To these
poor creatures it seemed indeed as though an angel from heaven had come
down when Raymond bent over them and put food and drink to their lips.
Many an office of loving mercy to the sick and dying did he and Roger
perform ere daylight faded from the sky; and before night actually fell,
the Father had by precept and example got together a band of helpers
ready and willing to tend the sick and bury the dead, and the people
felt that the terrible panic which had fallen upon them, and caused
every one to flee away, had given place to something better and more humane.

Men who had fled their stricken homes and had spent their time carousing
in the taverns, trying to drown their fears and their griefs, now
returned home to see how it fared with those who had been left behind.
Women who had been almost distracted by grief, and had been rushing into
the church sobbing and crying, and neglecting the sick, that they might
pour out their hearts at the shrine of their favourite saint, were
admonished by the Holy Father, so well known to them, to return to their
homes and their duties. As the pall of night fell over the stricken
city, and the three who had entered it a few hours before still toiled
on without