continued screeching and crying out for several hours,
void of all sense, or at least government of her senses, and, as I was
told, never came thoroughly to herself again. As to the young maiden,
she was a dead corpse from that moment: for the gangrene, which
occasions the spots, had spread over her whole body, and she died in
less than two hours. But still the mother continued crying out, not
knowing anything more of her child, several hours after she was dead.
It is so long ago that I am not certain, but I think the mother never
recovered, but died in two or three weeks after.

I have by me a story of two brothers and their kinsman, who, being
single men, but that had staid[104] in the city too long to get away,
and, indeed, not knowing where to go to have any retreat, nor having
wherewith to travel far, took a course for their own preservation,
which, though in itself at first desperate, yet was so natural that it
may be wondered that no more did so at that time. They were but of mean
condition, and yet not so very poor as that they could not furnish
themselves with some little conveniences, such as might serve to keep
life and soul together; and finding the distemper increasing in a
terrible manner, they resolved to shift as well as they could, and to be
gone.

One of them had been a soldier in the late wars,[105] and before that in
the Low Countries;[106] and having been bred to no particular employment
but his arms, and besides, being wounded, and not able to work very
hard, had for some time been employed at a baker's of sea biscuit, in
Wapping.

The brother of this man was a seaman too, but somehow or other had been
hurt of[107] one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had worked for
his living at a sailmaker's in Wapping or thereabouts, and, being a good
husband,[108] had laid up some money, and was the richest of the three.

The third man was a joiner or carpenter by trade, a handy fellow, and he
had no wealth but his box or basket of tools, with the help of which he
could at any time get his living (such a time as this excepted) wherever
he went; and he lived near Shadwell.

They all lived in Stepney Parish, which, as I have said, being the last
that was infected, or at least violently, they staid there till they
evidently saw the plague was abating at the west part of the town, and
coming towards the east, where they lived.

The story of those three men, if the reader will be content to have me
give