said, 'for more than one of us to behold such
monstrous evil. 'Tis a society of fiends, Lucy, a training-school for
all vice, and the keeper is worthy of it. I think it is not less than
acted blasphemy to throw good men into it; as well send them alive into
hell. The Lord look upon it, and require it.'

'Are there any of the Friends shut up there?' I asked.

'There have been hundreds, I am told,' she said; 'even now there are too
many, but they die daily of fever and misery;' and she stopped short,
presently saying, 'If I find him not, I will not repent of my search. I
have fed some starving saints already.' So she continued her visits and
her inquiries.

But I began to find it an almost unbearable penance to stay within doors
alone in her absence; I prayed and struggled for composure, but could
not attain it, and at last I said I must go out sometimes to breathe the
air. She warned me of perils awaiting me if I walked abroad by myself,
but I got some poor coarse black clothes that I put on, and a hood to
hide my face; and I sometimes added to these a cloth tied about my neck,
such as I had seen on poor creatures who had sores. It was an artifice,
but I hope not a sinful one; for in this disguise, and contriving to
behave like a sick languishing person, I was more terrible to disorderly
people than they to me, and they kept at a good distance from me. Thus I
took many a walk about the streets; but my chief comfort was only to see
a variety of dismal objects. The street where we dwelt was quite
grass-grown and empty; I do not think there were above two inhabited
houses in it, nor would you see above half a dozen people go through it,
in all the length of the summer's day. Of the passengers that I met
elsewhere, I think two out of every three were poor sickly objects with
sores and plasters upon them; and sometimes it was my luck to meet
coffins of those dead of the sickness; for now there could be no strict
observing of the rule to bury them by night, the number of such funerals
increasing at a frightful rate.

CHAPTER XI.

HOW THERE CAME NEW GUESTS INTO THE HOUSE.

The last day that I ventured out in this foolhardy manner I had a
terrible fright which even now it is distasteful to remember. I was
hurrying to get home, being warned by the darkening light that it was
drawing near Althea's time to return, and, chancing to look behind me as
I turned a corner, I was aware that not many paces from me was a man,