with an eager light in
his eyes. Perhaps these two young lads had felt the calamity which
had befallen the city more than any one else in the house; for
whilst the father, mother, sisters, and two elder sons were all
hard at work doing all in their power for the relief of the sick,
the younger lads were kept at home, to be as far as possible out of
harm's way, and they had felt the confinement and idleness as most
irksome. Their mother employed them about the house when she could,
but it was not much she could find for them to do. To be sure there
was some amusement to be found in watching the life on the river;
for though traffic was suspended, many whole families were living
on board vessels moored on the river, and hoped by this device to
keep the plague away from them. Yet the time hung very heavy on
their hands, and the stories of the increasing ravages of the
plague could not but depress them, seeming as they did to lengthen
out indefinitely the time of their captivity.

Three of the sisters were practically living away from the house
(of which more anon), and the loneliness of the silent house was
becoming unbearable. To lads used to an active life and plenty of
exercise, the distemper itself seemed a less evil than this close
confinement between four walls. The bridge houses did not even
possess yards or strips of garden, and without venturing out into
the streets--which had for some weeks been forbidden by their
father--the boys could not stir beyond the walls of their home.

August had now come, a close, steaming, sultry August, and the
plague was raging with a virulence that threatened to destroy the
whole city. The Bills of Mortality week by week were appalling in
magnitude; and yet those who knew best the condition of the lower
courts and alleys were well aware that no possible record could be
kept of those crowded localities, where whole households and
families, even whole streets, were swept away in the course of a
few days, and where there were sometimes none left to give warning
and notice that there were dead to be borne away. So the registered
deaths could only show a certain proportionate accuracy; for even
the dead carts could keep no reckoning of the numbers they bore to
the common grave, and the bearers themselves were too often
stricken down in the performance of their ghastly duties, and shot
by their comrades into the pit amongst those whom they had carried
forth an hour before.

It was sm