y more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but
there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a
foot--toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came hither I knew
not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering
thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home
to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but
terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three
steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a
distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various
shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many
wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange
unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to
my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this) I fled into it
like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived,
or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot
remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never
frightened hare fled to cover or fox to earth with more terror of mind
than I to this retreat.

FROM 'HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON'

SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS OF THE PEOPLE

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time; while
the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by
several odd incidents, which put altogether, it was really a wonder the
whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon their
dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by heaven for
an Akeldama doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that
all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a
few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards and
cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there was
any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months
before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a little before
the fire; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the
other sex, whom I could almost call the old women too, remarked,
especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over,
that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very
near the houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to
the city alone