Gertrude stood like one turned to stone, her face growing as white as her kerchief.
"What of Reuben?" she asked, in a voice that she hardly knew for her own. "He is not--dead?"
"Pray Heaven he be not," cried Dorcas through her sobs; and then, with a great effort controlling herself, she told her brief tale.
"I went home at noon today and found them all in sore trouble. Reuben has not been seen or heard of for three days. Mother says she had a fear for several days before that that something was amiss; he looked so wan, and ate so little, and seemed like one out of whom all heart is gone. He would go forth daily to his work, but he came home harassed and tired, and on the last morning she thought him sick; but he said he was well, and promised to come home early. Then she let him go, and no one has seen him since.
"Oh, what can have befallen him? There seems but one thing to believe. They say the sickness is worse now than ever it was. People drop down dead in street and market, and soon there will be none left to bury them. That must have been Reuben's fate. He has dropped down with the infection upon him, and if he be not lying in some pest house--which they say it is death now to enter--he must be lying in one of those awful graves.
"O Reuben! Reuben! we shall never see you again!"
[CHAPTER XII. EXCITING DISCOVERIES.]
Joseph and Benjamin found themselves exceedingly happy and exceedingly well occupied in their aunt's pleasant cottage. They rose every morning with the lark, and spent an hour in setting everything to rights in the house, and sweeping out every room with scrupulous care, as their mother had taught them to do at home, believing that perfect cleanliness was one of the greatest safeguards against infection. Hot and close though the weather remained, the air out in these open country places seemed delicious to the boys, and the freedom to run out every moment into the open fields was in itself a privilege which could only be appreciated by those who had been long confined within walls.
Sometimes they were alone in the house with their aunt. Sometimes the cottage harboured guests of various degrees--travellers fleeing from the doomed city in terror of the fearful mortality there, or poor unfortunates turned away from their own abodes because they were suspected of having been in contact with the sick, and were refused admittance again. Servant maids were often put in this melancholy plight. They would be sent upon errands by their employers to the bake house or some other place; and perhaps ere they were admitted again they would be closely questioned as to what they had seen or heard. Sometimes having terrible and doleful tales to tell of having seen persons fall down in the agonies of death almost at their feet, terror would seize hold upon the inmates of the house, who would refuse to open the door to one who might by this time be herself infected. And when this was the case, the forlorn creature was forced to wander away, and generally tried to find her way out of the city and into the country beyond. Many such unlucky wights, having no passes, were turned back by the guardians of the road; but some succeeded in evading these men, or else in persuading them, and many such unfortunates had found rest and help and shelter beneath Mary Harmer's charitable roof.