A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up.  He had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day-watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him.  All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen; they called for nothing, sent him of no errands, which used to be the chief business of the watchmen; neither had they given him any disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time.  It seems, the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapt only in a green rug, and carried her away.

The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, ’What d’ye want, that ye make such a knocking?’ He answered, ’I am the watchman!  How do you do?  What is the matter?’ The person answered, ’What is that to you?  Stop the dead-cart.’  This, it seems, was about one o’clock.  Soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered.  He continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times, ‘Bring out your dead’; but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.

The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him, came to relieve him.  Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the window or casement at which the person had looked out who had answered before continued open, being up two pair of stairs.

Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no clothes on her but her shift.  But though he called aloud, and putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.