They wended their way northward, avoiding the narrower thoroughfares and keeping to the broader streets. Even these were often very narrow and ill smelling, so that the brothers had recourse to their vinegar bottle or swallowed a spoonful of Venice treacle before venturing down. Once they were forced to turn aside out of their way to avoid a heap of corpses that had been brought out from a narrow alley to wait for the cart. They had heard of such things before, but to see them was tenfold more terrible. Yet the spirit of adventure took possession of them as they passed along, and they were less afraid even of the most terrible things than they had been of lesser ones at starting.
In passing near to the little church of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, they were attracted by the sound of a voice crying out as if in excitement or fear. Being filled with curiosity in spite of their fears, they turned in the direction of the sound, and came upon a man clutching hard at the railings of the little churchyard, which like all others in that part was now filled to overflowing, and closed for burials, the dead being taken to the great pits dug in various places. Night though it was, there was a small crowd of persons gathered round the railings, all peering in with eager faces, whilst the voice of the man at the corner kept calling out:
"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.