When afternoon came, she prepared more food for the children, and partook of it with them, and wondered how and where she should spend the night.  The infant in her arms had grown strangely still and quiet.  It could not be roused, and breathed slowly and heavily.

“Harry looked just like that before he went to sleep,” said the eldest of the children, coming and peeping into the small waxen face; and Gertrude gave a little involuntary shiver as she thought of the four still forms lying sleeping upstairs, and wondered whether this would make a fifth for the bearers to carry forth at night.

Just as the dusk began to fall, there came the sound of a slight parley without.  Then the key turned in the house door, and the next minute, to Gertrude’s unspeakable relief, Dinah entered the room.

“My poor child, did you think I was never coming to you?”

“I did not know if you could,” answered Gertrude.  “Oh, tell me, what must I do for all these little ones—­and for the baby?  Is he dying too?  It is so long since he has moved.  I am afraid to look at him lest I disturb him, but—­but—­”

Dinah bent over the little form, and lifted it gently from Gertrude’s arms.

“Poor little lamb, its troubles are all over,” she said, after a few moments.  “The little ones often go like that—­quite peacefully and quietly.  It has not suffered at all.  It has been a gentle and merciful release.  You need not weep for it, my child.”

“I think my tears are for the living rather than for the dead,” answered Gertrude, with brimming eyes.  “There are but three left out of seven living yesterday, and what is to become of them?”

“We must report their case to the authorities.  There are numbers of poor children left thus orphaned, and it is hard to know what will become of them.  I will send at once to my brother-in-law, and report the matter to him.  He will know what it were best to do.  Meantime I shall remain here with you.  Janet is busy next door.  Her patient is mending, and none besides in the house is sick.  But oh, the things I have seen and heard this day!  There is not one living now in the house to which I went first, and I have seen ten men and women die since I saw you last.

“God alone knows how it is to end.  It seems as though His hand were outstretched, and as though the whole city were doomed!”

CHAPTER IX.  JOSEPH’S PLAN.

“Ben, boy, I am sick to death of sitting at home doing naught, and seeing naught of all the sights that be abroad, and of which men are for ever speaking.  What boots it to be alive, if one is buried or shut up as we are?  Art thou afraid to come forth? or shall I go alone?”