So after one glance of mutual comprehension and sympathy, they both answered in one breath: 

“No, we will not turn back.  We will go with you.  Where the need is sorest, there would we be, too.”

“God bless you!  God bless you for angels of mercy!” sobbed the poor woman, who heard their words, and knowing both Dinah and Janet, understood something of the situation, “for we be perishing like sheep here in this place, shut away from all, and with never a nurse to come nigh us.  There be some rough fellows placed outside the houses to see that none go in or out, and perchance they do their best to find nurses; but at such a time as this it is small wonder if ofttimes none are to be found.  And some they have brought are worse than none.  The Lord protect us from the tender mercies of such!”

The narrow court into which they now turned was cool in comparison with the sunny street; but there was nothing refreshing in the coolness, for fumes of every sort exhaled from the houses, and at the far end there burned a fire of resinous pine logs, the smoke from which, when it rolled down the court, was almost choking.

“They say it will check the spread of the distemper to the streets beyond,” said the woman, “but methinks it does as much harm as good.  If the Lord help us not, we be all dead men.  The cart took away a score or more of corpses last night.  Pray Heaven it take not away my poor husband tonight!”

The bearer of the handcart stopped at the door indicated by the woman, and lifted the stricken man in his arms.  It was one of the very few doors all down that street which did not bear the ominous red cross.

As Gertrude looked up and down the court her heart sank within her for pity.  The houses were closed.  Watchers lounged at the doors, drinking and smoking and jesting together, being by this time recklessly and brutally hardened to their office.  They knew not from day to day when their own turn might come; but this knowledge seemed to have an evil rather than a sobering effect upon them.

The better sort of watchmen were employed, as a rule, to keep the better sort of houses.  When these crowded courts and alleys were attacked, the authorities had to send whom they could rather than whom they would.  Indefatigable and courageously as they worked, the magnitude of the calamity was such that it taxed their resources to the utmost; and had it not been for the bountiful supplies of money sent in by charitable people, from the king downwards, for the relief of the city in this time of dire need, thousands must have perished from actual want, as well as those who fell victims to the plague itself.  Yet do as these brave and devoted men could, the sufferings of the poor at this time were terrible.

As the sound of voices was heard in the street below, windows were thrown up, and heads protruded with more or less of caution.  From one of the windows thus thrown up there issued a lamentable wailing, and a woman with a white, wild face cried out in tones of passionate entreaty: