The whole experience through which she had passed had made a deep and lasting impression upon Gertrude.  She had already watched two of the beings nearest and dearest to her fall victims to the dire disease which was raging in the city and laying low its thousands daily.  It seemed to her that there was but one thing to be done now by those whose circumstances permitted it, and that was to go forth amid the sick and smitten ones, and do what lay within human power to mitigate their sufferings, and to afford them the solace and comfort of feeling that they were not altogether shut off from the love and sympathy of their fellow men.

“Father,” she urged, as she saw that her parent still hesitated, “what would have become of us without Dinah?  What should we have done had no help come to us in our hour of need?  Think of the hundreds and thousands about us longing for some such tendance and love as she brought hither to us!  What would have become of us had no kind neighbours befriended us?  And are we not bidden to do unto others as we would have them do unto us in like case?”

“But the risk, my child, the risk!” he urged.  “Am I to lose my last and only stay and solace?”

“Mother died in this house, which is now doubly infected.  I was with her and with Frederick both, and yet I am sound and whole, and thou also.  Why should we so greatly fear, when no man can say who will be smitten and who will escape?  Methinks, perchance, those who seek to do their duty to the living, as our good neighbours and the city aldermen and magistrates and doctors are doing, will be specially protected of God.  Father, let me go!  Truly I feel that I have been bidden.  Here I should fret myself ill in fruitless longing.  Let me go forth with Dinah.  Let me obey the call which methinks God has sent me.  Truly I think I shall be the safest so.  And who can say in these days, take what precaution he will, that he may not already have upon him the dreaded tokens?  If we must die, let us at least die doing good to our fellow men.  Did not our Lord say to those who visited the sick in their necessity, ’Ye have done it unto me’?”

“Child,” said the Master Builder, in a much-moved voice, “it shall be as you desire.  Go; and may the blessing of God go with you.  I will offer myself for any post, as searcher or examiner, which may be open, if indeed I may go forth from this house ere the twenty-eight days be expired.  If Dinah will take you, and if the Harmers will let you both sally forth from the house, I will not keep you back.  It may be indeed that God has called you; and if so, may He keep and bless you both.”

Father and daughter embraced each other tenderly.

In those times the shadow of death was so very apparent that no one knew from day to day what might befall him ere the morrow.  Strong men, leaving their homes apparently in their usual health, would sink down in the streets an hour afterwards, and perhaps die before the very eyes of the passersby, none of whom would be found willing so much as to approach the sufferer with a kind word.  Men would hasten by with vinegar-steeped cloths held closely over their faces; and later on some bearer with a cart or barrow would be sent to carry away the corpse and fling it into the nearest pit, of which there was now an ever-increasing number in the various parishes.