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Updated: June 1, 2025
Sir Norman, with his eyes on the pest-cart, and the long white figure therein, took no heed of anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath, and strode along in dismal silence till they reached, at last, their journey's end. As the cart stopped the two young men approached the edge of the plague-pit, and looked in with a shudder.
"And then, as I couldn't tell them they went in to see for themselves, and shortly after came out with a body wrapped in a sheet, which they put in a pest-cart going by, and had it buried, I suppose, with the rest in the plague-pit." The stranger fairly staggered back, and caught at a pillar near for support.
Several houses, he said, were infected in Cheapside, and two in Wood-street, one of which was but a short distance from the grocer's habitation. A watchman was stationed at the door, and the red cross marked upon it, and on the following night the grocer heard the sound of the doleful bell announcing the approach of the pest-cart.
Both were to be had; the former, a hole in the wall behind the shop; the latter, a pallid, cadaverous-looking person, with the air of one who had been dead a week, thought better of it and rose again. There was a long table in the aforesaid hole in the wall, bearing a strong family likeness to a dissecting-table; upon which the stark figure was laid, and the pest-cart driver disappeared.
All around was peaceful and still; moon and stars sailed serenely through a sky of silver and snow; a faint cool breeze floated up from the river and fanned his hot and fevered forehead; the whole city lay wrapped in stillness as profound and deathlike as the fabled one of the marble prince in the Eastern tale-nothing living moved abroad, but the lonely night-guard keeping their dreary vigils before the plague-stricken houses, and the ever-present, ever-busy pest-cart, with its mournful bell and dreadful cry.
"Where are you going now?" said Ormiston. "Are you for Whitehall's to night?" "No!" said Sir Norman, rather dejectedly, turning to follow the pest-cart. "I am for the plague-pit in Finsbury fields!" "Nonsense, man!" exclaimed Ormiston, energetically, "what will take you there? You surely are not mad enough to follow the body of that dead girl?" "I shall follow it!
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