rd; "but yesterday and to-day have far exceeded all
that have gone before. The distempered have died quicker than cattle of
the murrain. I visited upwards of a hundred houses in the Borough this
morning, and only found ten persons alive; and out of those ten, not
one, I will venture to say, is alive now. It will, in truth, be a mercy
if they are gone. There were distracted mothers raving over their
children,--a young husband lamenting his wife,--two little children
weeping over their dead parents, with none to attend them, none to feed
them,--an old man mourning over his son cut off in his prime. In short,
misery and distress in their worst form,--the streets ringing with
shrieks and groans, and the numbers of dead so great that it was
impossible to carry them off. You remember Solomon Eagle's prophecy?"

"Perfectly," replied Leonard; "and I lament to see its fulfilment."

"'The streets shall be covered with grass, and the living shall not be
able to bury their dead,'--so it ran," said Rainbird. "And it has come
to pass. Not a carriage of any description, save the dead-cart, is to be
seen in the broadest streets of London, which are now as green as the
fields without her walls, and as silent as the grave itself. Terrible
times, as I said before--terrible times! The dead are rotting in heaps
in the courts, in the alleys, in the very houses, and no one to remove
them. What will be the end of it all? What will become of this great
city?"

"It is not difficult to foresee what will become of it," replied
Leonard, "unless it pleases the Lord to stay his vengeful arm. And
something whispers in my ear that we are now at the worst. The scourge
cannot exceed its present violence without working our ruin; and deeply
as we have sinned, little as we repent, I cannot bring myself to believe
that God will sweep his people entirely from the face of the earth."

"I dare not hope otherwise," rejoined Rainbird, "though I would fain do
so. I discern no symptoms of abatement of the distemper, but, on the
contrary, an evident increase of malignity, and such is the opinion of
all I have spoken with on the subject. Chowles told me he buried two
hundred more yesterday than he had ever done before, and yet he did not
carry a third of the dead to the plague-pit. He is a strange fellow that
Chowles. But for his passion for his horrible calling there is no
necessity for him to follow it, for he is now one of the richest men in
London."

"He mu