s of the poor at this time were terrible.

As the sound of voices was heard in the street below, windows were
thrown up, and heads protruded with more or less of caution. From
one of the windows thus thrown up there issued a lamentable
wailing, and a woman with a white, wild face cried out in tones of
passionate entreaty:

"Help! help! help! good people. Ah, if that be a nurse, let her
come hither. There be five dying and two dead in the house, and
none but me to tend them, and methinks I am stricken to the death!"

"Janet," said Dinah, with a searching glance at her niece,
"methinks I must needs answer that cry. Go with this good woman,
and do what thou canst for her husband. Thou dost know what is best
to be done. I will come to thee anon; but thou wilt not fear to be
thus left? There is but one sick in this house. The need is sorer
elsewhere."

"Go, I will do my best. At least I can make a poultice, and see
that he is put to bed. I have medicaments in my bag. I would not
hinder thee. Sure there is work for all in this terrible place!"

"And this is only one of many scattered throughout the city!"
breathed Gertrude softly, her heart swelling within her.

Ever since she had halted before this house she had been aware of
the sound of plaintive weeping and wailing proceeding from the
adjoining tenement; and as Dinah moved away towards the door
opposite, she asked Elizabeth Harwood what the sound meant, and if
there was trouble in the next house.

"Trouble?--trouble and death everywhere!" was the answer. "The man
was taken away in the cart yesternight. God alone knows who is
alive in the house now. There be seven little children there with
their mother, but which of them be living and which dead by now no
one knows. I have heard nothing of the woman's voice these many
hours. Pray Heaven she be not dead--and the little helpless
children all alone with the dead corpse!"

"Oh, surely that could not be!" cried Gertrude. "Surely the
watchman would go to them! Oh, that must not be! I will go and
speak with him. He would not leave them to perish so!"

The woman shook her head, and hurried up the stairs whither her
husband had been carried. Her heart was too full of her own anxious
misery to have room for more than a passing sympathy for the needs
and troubles of others.

But Gertrude could not rest. She neither followed Janet into this
house nor her aunt across the street. She went to the door of the
next house, up