Some of the churches stood wide open, and persons were seen to hurry in, lock themselves for a few minutes into separate pews, and pour out their souls in supplication.  Often the sound of lamentation and weeping was heard to issue from these buildings.  At certain hours of the day such of the clergy as were not scared away through fear of infection, or who were not otherwise occupied amongst the sick, would come in and address the persons gathered there, or read the daily office of prayer; but although at first these services had been well attended—­people flocking to the churches as though to take sanctuary there—­the widely-increased mortality and the fearful spread of the distemper had caused a panic throughout the city.  The magistrates had issued warnings against the assembling of persons together in the same building, and the congregations were themselves so wasted and decimated by death and disease that each week saw fewer and fewer able to attend.

From every steeple in the city the bells tolled ceaselessly for the dead.  But it was already whispered that soon they would toll no more, for the deaths were becoming past all count, and there might likely enough be soon no one left to toll.

At one open place through which Dinah led her companions, a tall man, strangely habited, and with a great mass of untrimmed hair and beard, was addressing a wild harangue to a ring of breathless listeners.  In vivid and graphic words he was summing up the wickedness and perversity of the city, and telling how that the wrath of God had descended upon it, and that He would no longer stay His hand.  The day of mercy had gone by; the day of vengeance had come—­the day of reckoning and of punishment.  The innocent must now perish with the guilty, and he warned each one of his hearers to prepare to meet his Judge.

The man was gazing up overhead with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets.  Every face in the crowd grew pale with horror.  The man seemed rooted to the spot with a ghastly terror.  They followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing save the quivering sunshine above them.

Suddenly one in the crowd gave a shriek which those who heard it never forgot, and fell to the ground like one dead.

With a wild, terrible laugh the preacher gathered up his long gown and fled onwards, and the crowd scattered helter skelter, terrified and desperate.  None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes.  All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight.  He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky.  A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the tears streaming down her face.

“Why, it is none other than good John Harwood and his wife Elizabeth!” cried Janet, making a forward step.  “Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures!  Good aunt, prithee let us do what we can for their relief.  I knew not the man, his face was so changed, but I know him now.  They are very honest, good folks, and have worked for us ere now.  They live hard by, if so be they have not changed their lodgings.  Can we do nothing to help them?”