By this time numbers of those who had quitted London having returned to it, the streets began to resume their wonted appearance.  The utmost care was taken by the authorities to cleanse and purify the houses, in order to remove all chance of keeping alive the infection.  Every room in every habitation where a person had died of the plague—­and there were few that had escaped the visitation—­was ordered to be whitewashed, and the strongest fumigations were employed to remove the pestilential effluvia.  Brimstone, resin, and pitch were burnt in the houses of the poor; benjamin, myrrh, and other more expensive perfumes in those of the rich; while vast quantities of powder were consumed in creating blasts to carry off the foul air.  Large and constant fires were kept in all the houses, and several were burnt down in consequence of the negligence of their owners.

All goods, clothes, and bedding, capable of harbouring infection, were condemned to be publicly burned, and vast bonfires were lighted in Finsbury Fields and elsewhere, into which many hundred cart-loads of such articles were thrown.  The whole of Chowles’s hoard, except the plate, which he managed, with Judith’s aid, to carry off and conceal in certain hiding-places in the vaults of Saint Faith’s, was taken from the house in Nicholas-lane, and cast into the fire.

The cathedral was one of the first places ordered to be purified.  The pallets of the sick were removed and burned, and all the stains and impurities with which its floor and columns were polluted were cleansed.  Nothing was left untried to free it from infection.  It was washed throughout with vinegar, fumigated with the strongest scents, and several large barrels of pitch were set fire to in the aisles.”

“It shall undergo another species of purification,” said Solomon Eagle, who was present during these proceedings; “one that shall search every nook within it—­shall embrace all those columns, and pierce every crack and crevice in those sculptured ornaments; and then, and not till then, will it be thoroughly cleansed.”

During all this time the grocer had not opened his dwelling.  The wisdom of this plan was now made fully apparent.  The plague was declining fast, and not an inmate of his house had been attacked by it.  Soon after the melancholy occurrence, he had been informed by Doctor Hodges of Amabel’s death; but the humane physician concealed from him the painful circumstances under which it occurred.  It required all Mr. Bloundel’s fortitude to support him under the shock of this intelligence, and he did not communicate the afflicting tidings to his wife until he had prepared her for their reception.  But she bore them better than he had anticipated; and though she mourned her daughter deeply and truly, she appeared completely resigned to the loss.  Sorrow pervaded the whole household for some weeks; and the grocer, who never relaxed his system, shrouded his sufferings under the appearance of additional austerity of manner.  It would have been a great consolation to him to see Leonard Holt; but the apprentice had disappeared; and even Doctor Hodges could give no account of him.