“See! see! there she goes!  She stands there by yon tall tombstone waving her arms over her head!  Now she is wringing her hands, and weeping again.

“O my wife, my wife! do you not know me?  I am here, Margaret, I am here!  Weep not for the children who are dead; weep for unhappy me, who am left alive.  Ay, it is for the living that men should weep and howl.  The dead are at peace—­their troubles are over; but our agony is yet to come.

“Margaret!  Margaret! look at me! pity me!

“Ah, she will not hear!  She turns away!  See, she is gliding hither and thither seeking the graves of her children—­

“Margaret!  I could not help it.  They would not let them lie beside thee!  They took them away in the cart.  I would have sprung in after them, but they held me back.

“Ah, woe is me! woe is me!  There is no place for me either among the living or the dead.  All turn from me alike!”

The tears rolled down the poor man’s face, his voice was choked with sobs.  He still continued to point and to cry out, and to address some imaginary being whom he declared was wandering amongst the tombs.  The boys pressed near to look, for some in the crowd suddenly made exclamations as though they had caught a glimpse of the phantom; but look as they would the brothers saw nothing, and Joseph asked of an elderly man in the little crowd what it all meant.

“Methinks it means only that yon poor fellow has lost his reason,” he answered, shaking his head.  “His wife was one of the first to die when the distemper broke out; and men called it only a fever, though some said she had the tokens on her.  She was buried here.  And it is but a week since the last of his children was taken—­six in two weeks; and he has escaped out of his house, and wanders about the streets, and comes here every night, saying that he sees his dead wife, and that she is looking for her children, and cannot find them because they are lying in the plague pit.  He is distraught, poor fellow; but many men gather night by night to hear him.

“For my part, I will come no more.  Men are best at home in their own houses; and you lads had best go home as fast as you can.  It is no place and no hour for boys to be abroad.”

Joseph and Benjamin said a civil goodnight to the man, and taking hands bent their steps northward once again.  They were now close to the open Moor Fields; and although there was still another region of houses to be passed upon the other side, they felt that when once they had passed the gate and the walls they should have left the worst of the peril behind them.

CHAPTER X. WITHOUT THE WALLS.

Only one trifling incident befell the boys before they found themselves without the city gate.  They were proceeding down Coleman Street towards Moor Gate, where they knew they should have to show their pass, and perhaps have some slight trouble in getting through, and were rehearsing such things as they had decided to tell the guard at the gate, when the sound of a dismal howling smote upon their ears, and they paused to look about them, for the street was very still, and almost every house seemed deserted and empty.