Leonard heaved a sigh at this remark.  “I now recollect where I met you, friend,” he remarked.  “It was at Saint Paul’s, when I was in search of my master’s daughter, who had been carried off by the Earl of Rochester.  But you were then in the garb of a smith.”

“I recollect the circumstance, too, now you remind me of it,” replied the other.  “Your name is Leonard Holt as surely as mine is Robert Rainbird.  I recollect, also, that you offended me about a dog belonging to the piper’s pretty daughter, Nizza Macascree, which I was about to destroy in obedience to the Lord Mayor’s commands.  However, I bear no malice, and if I did, this is not a time to rip up old quarrels.”

“You are right, friend,” returned Leonard.  “The few of us left ought to be in charity with each other.”

“Truly, ought we,” rejoined Rainbird.  “For my own part, I have seen so much misery within the last few weeks, that my disposition is wholly changed.  I was obliged to abandon my old occupation of a smith, because my master died of the plague, and there was no one else to employ me.  I have therefore served as a watchman, and in twenty days have stood at the doors of more than twenty houses.  It would freeze your blood were I to relate the scenes I have witnessed.”

“It might have done formerly,” replied Leonard; “but my feelings are as much changed as your own.  I have had the plague twice myself.”

“Then, indeed, you can speak,” replied Rainbird.  “Thank God, I have hitherto escaped it!  Ah! these are terrible times—­terrible times!  The worst that ever London knew.  Although I have been hitherto miraculously preserved myself, I am firmly persuaded no one will escape.”

“I am almost inclined to agree with you,” replied Leonard.

“For the last week the distemper has raged fearfully—­fearfully, indeed,” said Rainbird; “but yesterday and to-day have far exceeded all that have gone before.  The distempered have died quicker than cattle of the murrain.  I visited upwards of a hundred houses in the Borough this morning, and only found ten persons alive; and out of those ten, not one, I will venture to say, is alive now.  It will, in truth, be a mercy if they are gone.  There were distracted mothers raving over their children,—­a young husband lamenting his wife,—­two little children weeping over their dead parents, with none to attend them, none to feed them,—­an old man mourning over his son cut off in his prime.  In short, misery and distress in their worst form,—­the streets ringing with shrieks and groans, and the numbers of dead so great that it was impossible to carry them off.  You remember Solomon Eagle’s prophecy?”

“Perfectly,” replied Leonard; “and I lament to see its fulfilment.”

“’The streets shall be covered with grass, and the living shall not be able to bury their dead,’—­so it ran,” said Rainbird.  “And it has come to pass.  Not a carriage of any description, save the dead-cart, is to be seen in the broadest streets of London, which are now as green as the fields without her walls, and as silent as the grave itself.  Terrible times, as I said before—­terrible times!  The dead are rotting in heaps in the courts, in the alleys, in the very houses, and no one to remove them.  What will be the end of it all?  What will become of this great city?”