and
fresh, and in spite of all evil auguries, sanguine persons had
tried hard to believe and to make others believe that the peril of
a visitation of the plague had been somewhat overrated. Yet the
choked thoroughfares leading out of London gave the lie to these
suppositions, and for many weeks the bridge was a sight in itself,
crowded with carriages and waggons all filled with the richer folks
and their goods, hastening to the pleasant regions of Surrey to
forget their fears and escape the pestilential atmosphere of the
city.

Then towards the end of the month a great heat set in, and at once,
as it were, the infection broke out in a hundred different and
unsuspected places, not only without but within the city walls. How
the distemper had so spread none then dared to guess. It seemed
everywhere at once, none knew why or how. Doubtless it was in
innumerable instances the tainted condition of the wells from which
the bulk of the people still drew their water; but men did not
think of these things long ago. They looked each other in the face
in fear and terror, none knowing but that his neighbour in the
street might be carrying about with him the seeds of the dread
distemper.

It now behoved all careful citizens to bethink them well what they
would do, with the fearful foe knocking as it were at their very
doors, and the matter was brought home right early to the Harmer
household, by a thing that befell them at the very outset of the
access of hot weather which told so fatally upon the city almost
imumediately afterwards.

Rachel Harmer was awakened from sleep one night by the sound of
something rattling upon the bed-chamber floor, as though it had
fallen from the open casement, and as she came to her waking
senses, she heard a voice without calling in urgent accents:

"Mother! mother! mother!"

Rising in some alarm, she went to the window which projected over
the lower stories of the house, as was usual at that time, and on
putting out her head she beheld a female figure standing in the
roadway below. When the moonlight fell upon the upturned face, she
saw it was that of her daughter Janet, who was in the service of
Lady Howe, and was her waiting maid, living in her house not far
from Whitehall, and earning good wages in that gay household.

In no little alarm at seeing her daughter out alone in the street
at night, she spoke her name and bid her wait at the door till she
could let her in, which she would do i