an to
open his stores. Dallison told him that the alarm was worse than
ever--that vast numbers were endeavouring to leave the city, but no one
could now do so without a certificate, which was never granted if the
slightest suspicion was attached to the party.

"If things go on in this way," said the porter, "London will soon be
deserted. No business is conducted, as it used to be, and everybody is
viewed with distrust. The preachers, who ought to be the last to quit,
have left their churches, and the Lord's day is no longer observed. Many
medical men even have departed, declaring their services are no longer
of any avail. All public amusements are suspended, and the taverns are
only open to the profane and dissolute, who deride God's judgments, and
declare they have no fear. Robberies, murders, and other crimes, have
greatly increased, and the most dreadful deeds are now committed with
impunity. You have done wisely, sir, in protecting yourself against
them."

"I have reason to be thankful that I have done so," replied Bloundel.
And he closed his shutter to meditate on what he had just heard.

And there was abundant food for reflection. Around him lay a great and
populous city, hemmed in, as by a fire, by an exterminating plague, that
spared neither age, condition, nor sex. No man could tell what the end
of all this would be--neither at what point the wrath of the offended
Deity would stop--nor whether He would relent, till He had utterly
destroyed a people who so contemned his word. Scarcely daring to hope
for leniency, and filled with a dreadful foreboding of what would ensue,
the grocer addressed a long and fervent supplication to Heaven,
imploring a mitigation of its wrath.

On joining his family, his grave manner and silence showed how
powerfully he had been affected. No one questioned him as to what had
occurred, but all understood he had received some distressing
intelligence.

Amid his anxiety one circumstance gave him unalloyed satisfaction. This
was the change wrought in Amabel's character. It has been stated that
she had become extremely devout, and passed the whole of the time not
appointed for other occupations, in the study of the Scriptures, or in
prayer. Her manner was extremely sedate, and her conversation assumed a
tone that gave her parents, and especially her father, inexpressible
pleasure. Mrs. Bloundel would have been equally delighted with the
change, if it had tended to forward her own favo