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The Rebels took delight in deluding the prisoners with false hopes, telling them that they were soon to be exchanged and sent home; but instead of release, the dead-cart went its daily rounds, bearing its ghastly burden. That was their exchange, and they looked upon the shallow trenches as the only home which they would ever reach. Hope died out and despair set in.

The tragedy of that fruit-gathering is described with extraordinary grimness and force in the abrupt language of verse 3. It is like Defoe's picture of the dead-cart in the plague of London. Such is ever the end of departing from God songs palsied into silence or turned into wailing when the judgment bursts; death stalking supreme, and silence brooding over all.

"The dead-cart will pass by in an hour," said the watchman; "and then the body can be taken away." "An hour will be too late," rejoined Thirlby. "If she continues in this frantic state, she will be dead before that time. You have a hand-barrow there. Take the body to the plague-pit at once, and I will reward you for your trouble."

To penetrate the recesses of the prison, was almost to insure destruction, and none but the attendants of the dead-cart and the nurses attempted it. Among the latter was Judith. Employed as a nurse on the first outburst of the plague, she willingly and fearlessly undertook the office.

Chowles at home," observed Leonard: "for I saw him with the dead-cart not half an hour ago." "Very likely," returned the doctor; "but I shall see one of his men. The coffin-maker's business is now carried on in the night time," he added, with a sigh; "and he drives a flourishing trade. These sad times will make his fortune."

Another dead-cart was heard rumbling along, accompanied by the harsh cries of the driver, and the doleful ringing of the bell. The next moment the loathly vehicle was seen coming along the Old Bailey. It paused before a house, from which four bodies were brought, and then passed on towards Smithfield.

Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as particularly when the watchman was sent of some errand; for it was his business to go of any errand that the family sent him of; that is to say, for necessaries, such as food and physic; to fetch physicians, if they would come, or surgeons, or nurses, or to order the dead-cart, and the like; but with this condition, too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the house and take the key away with him, To evade this, and cheat the watchmen, people got two or three keys made to their locks, or they found ways to unscrew the locks such as were screwed on, and so take off the lock, being in the inside of the house, and while they sent away the watchman to the market, to the bakehouse, or for one trifle or another, open the door and go out as often as they pleased.

It had the tone, too, of one far more used to command than entreaty; and Sir Norman, instead of getting angry, as he felt he ought to have done, mechanically answered: "The watchman told you of the two young men who brought her out and laid her in the dead-cart I was one of the two." "And who was the other?" "A friend of mine one Malcolm Ormiston." "Ah! I know him!

Leonard, however, did not require to see the body to know whose it was. The moon was at its full, and shed a ghastly light over the group, and a large bat wheeled in narrow circles round the dead-cart. On reaching the door of the house, the burier set down the lantern near the body of a young man which had just been thrust forth.

'Why, you are in the dead-cart, and we are going to bury you. 'But I an't dead though, am I? says the piper, which made them laugh a little though, as John said, they were heartily frighted at first; so they helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his business.