The sun was not quite up as they started; but as they entered the silent streets of Guildford it was shining with a golden glory in strange contrast to the scenes upon which it would shortly have to look.  Early morning was certainly the best time for Joan to enter the town, for the cart had been its round, the dead had been removed from the streets, and the houses were quieter than they often were later in the day.  Once in a way a wild shriek or a burst of demoniacal laughter broke from some window; and once a girl, with hair flying wildly down her back, flew out of one of the houses sobbing and shrieking in a frenzy of terror, and was lost to sight down a side alley before Joan could reach her side.

Pursuing their way through the streets, they turned down the familiar road leading to John’s house, and dismounting at the gate, Joan gave up her palfrey to William to seek stabling for it behind, and walked up with Bridget to the open door of the house.

That door was kept wide open night and day, and none who came were ever turned away.  Joan entered the hall, to find great fires burning there, and round these fires were crowded shivering and moaning beings, some of the latest victims of the distemper, who had been brought within the hospitable shelter of that house of mercy, but who had not yet been provided with beds; for the numbers coming in day by day were even greater than the vacancies made by deaths constantly occurring in the wards (as they would now be called).  Helpers were few, and of these one or another would be stricken down, and carried away to burial after a few hours’ illness.

Of the wretched beings grouped about the fires several were little children, and Joan’s heart went out in compassion to the suffering morsels of humanity.  Taking a little moaning infant upon her knee, and letting two more pillow their weary beads against her dress, she signed to Bridget to remove her riding cloak, which she gently wrapped about the scantily-clothed form of a woman extended along the ground at her feet, to whom the children apparently belonged.  The woman was dying fast, as her glazing eyes plainly showed.

Probably her case was altogether hopeless; but Joan was not yet seasoned to such scenes, and it seemed too terrible to sit by idle whilst a fellow creature actually died not two yards away.  Surely somewhere within that house aid could be found.  The girl rose gently from her seat, and still clasping the stricken infant in her arms, she moved towards one of the closed doors of the lower rooms.

Opening this softly, she looked in, and saw a row of narrow pallet beds down each side of the room, and every bed was tenanted.  Sounds of moaning, the babble of delirious talk, and thickly-uttered cries for help or mercy now reached her ears, and the terrible breath of the plague for the first time smote upon her senses in all its full malignity.  She recoiled for an instant, and clutched at the bag around her neck, which she was glad enough to press to her face.