light, until the dead-cart came rattling along, and
the drivers hoisted the body with their pitchforks on the top of their
dreadful load. Few other vehicles besides those same dead-carts appeared
in the city now; and they plied their trade busily, day and night; and
the cry of the drivers echoed dismally through the deserted streets:
"Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!" All who could do so had long
ago fled from the devoted city; and London lay under the burning heat
of the June sunshine, stricken for its sins by the hand of God. The
pest-houses were full, so were the plague-pits, where the dead were
hurled in cartfuls; and no one knew who rose up in health in the morning
but that they might be lying stark and dead in a few hours. The very
churches were forsaken; their pastors fled or lying in the plague-pits;
and it was even resolved to convert the great cathedral of St. Paul into
a vast plague-hospital. Cries and lamentations echoed from one end
of the city to the other, and Death and Charles reigned over London
together.

Yet in the midst of all this, many scenes of wild orgies and debauchery
still went on within its gates--as, in our own day, when the cholera
ravaged Paris, the inhabitants of that facetious city made it a
carnival, so now, in London, they were many who, feeling they had but a
few days to live at the most, resolved to defy death, and indulge in the
revelry while they yet existed. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow
you die!" was their motto; and if in the midst of the frantic dance or
debauched revel one of them dropped dead, the others only shrieked with
laughter, hurled the livid body out to the street, and the demoniac
mirth grew twice as fast and furious as before. Robbers and cut-purses
paraded the streets at noonday, entered boldly closed and deserted
houses, and bore off with impunity, whatever they pleased. Highwaymen
infested Hounslow Heath, and all the roads leading from the city,
levying a toll on all who passed, and plundering fearlessly the flying
citizens. In fact, far-famed London town, in the year of grace 1665,
would have given one a good idea of Pandemonium broke loose.

It was drawing to the close of an almost tropical June day, that the
crowd who had thronged the precincts of St. Paul's since early morning,
began to disperse. The sun, that had throbbed the livelong day like a
great heart of fire in a sea of brass, was sinking from sight in clouds
of crimson, purple an