Dinah bent over the little form, and lifted it gently from Gertrude's arms.
"Poor little lamb, its troubles are all over," she said, after a few moments. "The little ones often go like that--quite peacefully and quietly. It has not suffered at all. It has been a gentle and merciful release. You need not weep for it, my child."
"I think my tears are for the living rather than for the dead," answered Gertrude, with brimming eyes. "There are but three left out of seven living yesterday, and what is to become of them?"
"We must report their case to the authorities. There are numbers of poor children left thus orphaned, and it is hard to know what will become of them. I will send at once to my brother-in-law, and report the matter to him. He will know what it were best to do. Meantime I shall remain here with you. Janet is busy next door. Her patient is mending, and none besides in the house is sick. But oh, the things I have seen and heard this day! There is not one living now in the house to which I went first, and I have seen ten men and women die since I saw you last.
"God alone knows how it is to end. It seems as though His hand were outstretched, and as though the whole city were doomed!"
[CHAPTER IX. JOSEPH'S PLAN.]
"Ben, boy, I am sick to death of sitting at home doing naught, and seeing naught of all the sights that be abroad, and of which men are for ever speaking. What boots it to be alive, if one is buried or shut up as we are? Art thou afraid to come forth? or shall I go alone?"
"Where wilt thou go, brother?" asked Ben, looking up from a bit of wood carving upon which he was engrossed, with an eager light in his eyes. Perhaps these two young lads had felt the calamity which had befallen the city more than any one else in the house; for whilst the father, mother, sisters, and two elder sons were all hard at work doing all in their power for the relief of the sick, the younger lads were kept at home, to be as far as possible out of harm's way, and they had felt the confinement and idleness as most irksome. Their mother employed them about the house when she could, but it was not much she could find for them to do. To be sure there was some amusement to be found in watching the life on the river; for though traffic was suspended, many whole families were living on board vessels moored on the river, and hoped by this device to keep the plague away from them. Yet the time hung very heavy on their hands, and the stories of the increasing ravages of the plague could not but depress them, seeming as they did to lengthen out indefinitely the time of their captivity.
Three of the sisters were practically living away from the house (of which more anon), and the loneliness of the silent house was becoming unbearable. To lads used to an active life and plenty of exercise, the distemper itself seemed a less evil than this close confinement between four walls. The bridge houses did not even possess yards or strips of garden, and without venturing out into the streets--which had for some weeks been forbidden by their father--the boys could not stir beyond the walls of their home.