as he supposed, was occasioned
by some of the family dying just at that time. It seems, the night
before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a
servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers
or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapt only in a
green rug, and carried her away.

The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise
and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one
looked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of crying
voice, or a voice of one that was crying, 'What d'ye want, that ye make
such a knocking?' He answered, 'I am the watchman! How do you do? What
is the matter?' The person answered, 'What is that to you? Stop the
dead-cart.' This, it seems, was about one o'clock. Soon after, as the
fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but
nobody answered. He continued knocking, and the bellman called out
several times, 'Bring out your dead'; but nobody answered, till the man
that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer,
and drove away.

The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone
till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him, came to
relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked at
the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the
window or casement at which the person had looked out who had answered
before continued open, being up two pair of stairs.

Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder,
and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where
he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no
clothes on her but her shift. But though he called aloud, and putting
in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or
answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.

He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went up
also; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the Lord
Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at the
window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men,
ordered the house to be broke open, a constable and other persons
being appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundered; and
accordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that
young woman, who havin