ang, and a lugubrious voice called out:

"Bring forth your dead! bring forth your dead!"

Directed by Reuben, who was on the alert, the bearers themselves
entered the house and removed the body, wrapped in its linen
swathings, but without a coffin, for by this time there was not
such a thing to be had for love or money; nor could the carts have
contained their loads had each corpse been coffined.

Gertrude alone, from an upper window, saw the body of her brother
laid decently and reverently, under Reuben's direction, in the
ominous-looking vehicle. For the mother of the dead youth was
weeping her heart out in her husband's arms, and was not allowed to
know at what hour nor in what manner her son's body was conveyed
away.

"Will they fling him, with never a prayer, into some great pit such
as I have heard spoken of?" asked Gertrude of Dinah, who stood
beside her at the window, fearful lest she should be overwhelmed by
the horror of it all.

She now drew her gently and tenderly back into the room, whilst the
cart rumbled away upon its mournful errand, and smoothing the
tresses of the girl, and drawing her to rest upon a couch hard by,
she answered:

"Think not of that, dear child. For what does it matter what
befalls the frail mortal body? With whatsoever burial we may be
buried now, we shall rise again at the last day in glory and
immortality! That is what we must think of in these sorrowful
times. We must lift our hearts above the things of this world, and
let our conversation and citizenship be in heaven."

Then the tears gushed out from Gertrude's eyes, and she wept freely
and fully the healing tears of youth.

CHAPTER VII. SISTERS OF MERCY.

"Father, dear father, prithee let me go!"

"What, my child? Have I not lost all but thee? Am I to send thee
forth to thy death in this terrible city, stricken by the hand of
God?"

Into Gertrude's face there crept a wonderful light and brightness.
Her eyes shone with the intensity of her feeling.

"Father," she said, "it is even because I hold the city to be
smitten by God that I ask thy permission to go forth to minister to
the sick and stricken ones. It seems to me as though in my heart a
voice had spoken, saying, 'Go, and I will be with thee.' Father,
listen, I pray thee. I heard that voice first, methought, upon the
terrible night when they came and took Frederick away. When mother
was next laid low, and as I watched beside her, and watched
likewise ho