“I have no words today.  Some day I will find how to thank you for all this goodness at such a time.”

Before many hours had passed Dinah Morse was installed beside the sick man.  Strong perfumes were burnt in and about his room, and the terrible tumours which bespoke the poison in his blood were treated skilfully by poultices and medicaments, applied by one who thoroughly understood the nature of the disease and the course it ran.

But from the first it was apparent to a trained eye that the young man was doomed.  There was too much poison in his blood before, and his constitution was undermined by his reckless and dissolute life.  All that was possible was done to relieve the sufferings and abate the fever of the patient.  One of the best and most devoted of the doctors who remained courageously at his post during this terrible time was called in.  But he shook his head over the patient, and bid his parents make up their minds for the worst.

“You have the best nurse in all London,” said Dr. Hooker.  “If skill and care could save him, he would be saved.  But I fear me the poison has spread all over.  Be cautious how you approach him, for he breathes forth death to those who are not inoculated.  I would I could do more for you, but our skill avails little before this dread scourge.”

And so, with looks and words of friendly compassion and goodwill, the doctor took his departure; and before nightfall Frederick was called to his last account.

Just as the hour of midnight tolled, a sound of wheels was heard in the street below, a bell rang, and a lugubrious voice called out: 

“Bring forth your dead! bring forth your dead!”

Directed by Reuben, who was on the alert, the bearers themselves entered the house and removed the body, wrapped in its linen swathings, but without a coffin, for by this time there was not such a thing to be had for love or money; nor could the carts have contained their loads had each corpse been coffined.

Gertrude alone, from an upper window, saw the body of her brother laid decently and reverently, under Reuben’s direction, in the ominous-looking vehicle.  For the mother of the dead youth was weeping her heart out in her husband’s arms, and was not allowed to know at what hour nor in what manner her son’s body was conveyed away.

“Will they fling him, with never a prayer, into some great pit such as I have heard spoken of?” asked Gertrude of Dinah, who stood beside her at the window, fearful lest she should be overwhelmed by the horror of it all.

She now drew her gently and tenderly back into the room, whilst the cart rumbled away upon its mournful errand, and smoothing the tresses of the girl, and drawing her to rest upon a couch hard by, she answered: 

“Think not of that, dear child.  For what does it matter what befalls the frail mortal body?  With whatsoever burial we may be buried now, we shall rise again at the last day in glory and immortality!  That is what we must think of in these sorrowful times.  We must lift our hearts above the things of this world, and let our conversation and citizenship be in heaven.”