“Why, so we may; and methinks more are smitten so than those who go forth and breathe the air without!” cried Benjamin.  “Our aunt lives amongst the dying, but she is not smitten; and the girls are ever in peril, but they live on, whilst others are taken.  But will our father let us go forth?  For I would not like to go unless he bid us.”

“Nay, nor I,” answered Joseph quickly, for reverence for their father was a strong sentiment in all James Harmer’s sons and daughters; “we will strive to win his consent and blessing to our going forth; but we need not say all that we purpose doing when we are free.  For, indeed, it may well be that we shall meet with many hindrances.  They say that the roads leading away from the city are all closely watched, that no infected person is able to pass, and that many sound ones are turned back lest they bring the infection with them.”

“Then how shall we get out?” asked Benjamin; but Joseph nodded his head wisely, and said he had a plan.

Before, however, he could further enlighten his brother they heard their father’s footfall on the stair, and he came in looking weary and sad, as it was inevitable that he should, coming as he did into personal contact with so much misery, sickness, and death.

There was always refreshment ready for the workers at any hour of the day when they should come in to seek it.  The boys rushed off to get him such things as their mother had ready, and whilst he partook of the wholesome and appetising meal prepared for him, Joseph burst out with his pent-up weariness of the shut-up life, his longing to be free of the house and the city, and his earnest desire that his father would permit him and Benjamin to go forth and shift for themselves in the country until the terrible visitation was past.

The father listened with a grave face.  He too began to have a great fear that the whole city was doomed to be swept away, and although upheld in his resolve to do his duty, so long as he was able, by his strong and fervent faith in the goodness and mercy of God, he was disposed to the opinion that all who remained would in turn be carried off victims to the fearful pestilence.  Had he known from the beginning how terrible it would become in time, he sometimes said to himself, he would at least have made shift to send his family away; but now that they were engrossed in works of piety and charity, he could not feel it right to bid them cease their labours of love, nor did he feel any temptation to quit his own post.  Yet this made him the more ready to listen to the eager petition of his boys, and to consider the project which had formed itself in the quick brain of Joseph.

“Father, I have thought of it so much these past days.  We are sound in health.  Thou couldst get us the papers without which men say none can pass the watch upon the roads.  With them we can sally forth, with a small provision of money and food, and make our way either by boat to the farm at Greenwich where the other ’prentice boys live, and where there would be a welcome for us always, or else northward to our aunt beyond Islington, who will be hungering for news of us, and who will be rejoiced, I am very sure, to give us a welcome and to hear of the welfare of all, even though we come to her from the land of the shadow of death.”