before she entirely forgave him.  Far from being amended by her sufferings, she seemed to have grown more obdurate, and instantly commenced a fresh career of crime.  It was not, however, necessary now to hasten the end of the sick.  The distemper had acquired such force and malignity that it did its work quickly enough—­often too quickly—­and all she sought was to obtain possession of the poor patients’ attire, or any valuables they might possess worth appropriating.  To turn to the brighter side of the picture, it must not be omitted that when the pestilence was at its height, and no offers could induce the timorous to venture forth, or render assistance to the sufferers, Sir John Lawrence the Lord Mayor, the Duke of Albermarle, the Earl of Craven, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, devoted themselves to the care of the infected, and supplied them with every necessary they required.  Among the physicians, no one deserves more honourable mention than Doctor Hodges, who was unremitting in his attentions to the sufferers.

To return to the grocer.  While the plague was thus raging around him, and while every house in Wood-street except one or two, from which the inmates had fled, was attacked by the pestilence, he and his family had remained untouched.  About the middle of August, he experienced a great alarm.  His second son, Hubert, fell sick, and he removed him to one of the upper rooms which he had set aside as an hospital, and attended upon him himself.  In a few days, however, his fears were removed and he found, to his great satisfaction, that the youth had not been attacked by the plague, but was only suffering from a slight fever, which quickly yielded to the remedies applied.  About the same time, too, he lost his porter, Dallison.  The poor fellow did not make his appearance as usual for two days, and intelligence of his fate was brought on the following day by his wife, who came to state that her husband was dead, and had been thrown into the plague-pit at Aldgate.  The same night, however, she brought another man, named Allestry, who took the place of the late porter, and acquainted his employer with the deplorable state of the city.

Two days afterwards, Allestry himself died, and Mr. Bloundel had no one to replace him.  He thus lost all means of ascertaining what was going forward; but the deathlike stillness around him, broken only by the hoarse tolling of a bell, by a wild shriek or other appalling cry, proclaimed too surely the terrible state of things.  Sometimes, too, a passenger would go by, and would tell him the dreadful height to which the bills of mortality had risen, assuring him that ere another month had expired, not a soul would be left alive in London.

One night, as Solomon Eagle, who had likewise been miraculously preserved, pursued his course through the streets, he paused before Mr. Roundel’s house, and looking up at the window, at which the latter had chanced to be stationed, cried in a loud voice, “Be of good cheer.  You have served God faithfully, and there shall no evil befall you, neither shall the plague come nigh your dwelling.”  And raising his arms, as if invoking a blessing upon the habitation, he departed.