“Well,” said I, “friend, but will they let you come on board after you have been on shore here, when this has been such a terrible place, and so infected as it is?”

“Why, as to that,” said he, “I very seldom go up the ship side, but deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoist it on board:  if I did, I think they are in no danger from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch anybody, no, not of my own family; but I fetch provisions for them.”

“Nay,” says I, “but that may be worse; for you must have those provisions of somebody or other; and since all this part of the town is so infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with anybody; for the village,” said I, “is, as it were, the beginning of London, though it be at some distance from it.”

“That is true,” added he; “but you do not understand me right.  I do not buy provisions for them here.  I row up to Greenwich, and buy fresh meat there, and sometimes I row down the river to Woolwich,[170] and buy there; then I go to single farmhouses on the Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls and eggs and butter, and bring to the ships as they direct me, sometimes one, sometimes the other.  I seldom come on shore here, and I came only now to call my wife, and hear how my little family do, and give them a little money which I received last night.”

“Poor man!” said I.  “And how much hast thou gotten for them?”

“I have gotten four shillings,” said he, “which is a great sum, as things go now with poor men; but they have given me a bag of bread too, and a salt fish, and some flesh:  so all helps out.”

“Well,” said I, “and have you given it them yet?”

“No,” said he, “but I have called; and my wife has answered that she cannot come out yet, but in half an hour she hopes to come, and I am waiting for her.  Poor woman!” says he, “she is brought sadly down; she has had a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she will recover, but I fear the child will die.  But it is the Lord!”—­Here he stopped, and wept very much.

“Well, honest friend,” said I, “thou hast a sure comforter, if thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to the will of God:  he is dealing with us all in judgment.”

“O sir!” says he, “it is infinite mercy if any of us are spared; and who am I to repine!”

“Say’st thou so?” said I; “and how much less is my faith than thine!” And here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better this poor man’s foundation was, on which he stayed in the danger, than mine:  that he had nowhere to fly; that he had a family to bind him to attendance, which I had not; and mine was mere presumption, his a true dependence and a courage resting on God; and yet that he used all possible caution for his safety.

I turned a little away from the man while these thoughts engaged me; for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he.