Last thing of all, after the boys had partaken of an ample supper, and had shed a few natural tears at the thought that it might be the last meal ever eaten beneath the roof of the old home, the father knelt down and commended them solemnly to the care of Him in whose hands alone lay the issues of life and death.  Then he blessed the boys individually, charged them to take every reasonable care, and finally escorted them down to the door, which he carefully opened, and after ascertaining that the road was quite clear, he walked with them as far as the end of the bridge, and dismissed them on their way with another blessing.

Much sobered by the scenes through which they had passed, yet not a little elated by the quick and successful issue to their demand, the boys looked each other in the face by the light of the great yellow moon, and nipped each other by the hand to make sure it was not all a dream.

How strange the sleeping city looked beneath that pale white light!  The boys had hardly ever been abroad after nightfall, and never during this sad strange time, when even by day all was so different from what they had been used to see.  Now it did indeed look like a city of the dead, for not even an idle roisterer, or a drunkard stumbling homewards with uncertain gait, was to be seen.  The watchmen, sleeping or trying to sleep within the porches or upon the doorsteps of certain houses, were the only living beings to be seen; and even they were few and far between in this locality, for almost every house was shut up and empty, the inhabitants of many having fled before the distemper became so bad, and others having all died off, leaving the houses utterly vacant.

“Let us go and see the house where Janet and Rebecca and Mistress Gertrude dwell,” said Benjamin, as they watched their father’s figure vanish in the distance, and felt themselves quite alone in the world; “perchance one of them may be waking, and may look forth from the window if we throw up a pebble.  I would fain say a farewell word to them ere we go forth, for who knows whether we may see them again?”

“Ay, verily, we may be dead or else they,” said Joseph, but in the tone of one who has grown used to the thought.  “This way then; the house lies hard by, next door to my Lady Scrope’s.  Who would have thought that that cross old madwoman would have turned so kindly disposed towards the poor and sick as she hath done?”

There were many amongst her former friends and acquaintances who would have asked that question, had they been there to ask it.  Lady Scrope had never been credited with charitable feelings; and yet it was her doing that a large house, her own property, next door to the small one she chose to inhabit, had been made over to the magistrates and authorities of the city at this time, for the housing of orphaned children whose parents had perished of the plague, and who were thrown upon the charity of strangers, or upon those entrusted with the care of the city at this crisis.