em. May I live to write of their happy end! but
my fears are very great, and almost forbid me to pray thus.

Having thus resolved how to beguile the heavy time, I began spying about
for paper and pens and ink; and finding in a kind of lumber room a great
many sheets of coarse paper, I stitched them together; then with much
trembling I peeped into the study of the late poor master of the house,
and there found a bundle of quills and some ink; and, leaving money in
his desk to the full value of the things I took, I carried my
writing-tools into the great front parlour, and set myself to the work.

Now while I sat considering how to begin, Althea comes softly behind me,
and, looking over my shoulder, asks me what I would be at; and when I
told her, 'What, child,' says she, 'art going to turn historian? Thy
spirits are more settled than mine, if thou canst sit quietly down to
such work, with sights like these daily before thine eyes,' pointing
with her hand to the window. Now I had pulled the table into a corner
well out of sight from the street, wishing not to be discerned; for as
yet but one knows of our being hidden in this house, and we would fain
keep it a secret still. But rising and following with my eyes her
pointing hand, I could behold a sight common enough, but too dismal to
be looked on without fresh apprehension each time: in the middle of the
street, which is quite grown with grass, a horse and cart standing, no
driver in sight near it, and the cart as we too well knew being that
which goes round daily to take away such as die of the Plague, though as
it then stood we could not discern if any dead person lay in it.

'It is waiting for our neighbour next door,' says Althea. 'As I stood by
an open casement up-stairs I plainly heard the family bemoaning
themselves because the master is dead; I heard also how they are
devising to get away unobserved in the early morning, and escape to some
place of safety in the country. How sayest thou, Lucy? were it not well
for thee to go also in their company?'

'Never I, while you stay here,' I answered.

'It repents me often,' she said, 'that I discovered to you my design of
coming up hither. I would you were safe at home again.'

'I have no home, but where you are,' said I.

'Poor faithful little heart!' she says, sighing. 'Well, get on with thy
history-writing; I must go forth presently, when all is quiet again;
and when I return thou shalt show me what thou hast wri