asked it, even though the houses would not stretch themselves out
for the accommodation of more than a certain number.

But as in times of trouble men draw very near together, so the
misfortune of the citizens of London opened the hearts of their
neighbours of Southwark and the surrounding villages, who
themselves were now safe and in no danger from the great fire.
Hospitable countrymen came with wagons and took away homeless
creatures with their few poor goods, to be entertained for a while
by their own wives and daughters. Others who had to encamp in the
open fields were supplied with food by the surrounding inhabitants;
and although there were much sorrow of heart and distress, the
kindness shown to the burned out families did much to assuage their
woes.

James Harmer, who had done much to see to the safe housing of
multitudes of women and children, came home at last, and gathering
his household about him, gave thanks for their timely preservation
in another great peril; and then he dismissed them to their beds,
bidding them sleep, for that none knew what the morrow might bring
forth. And they went to such couches as they could find for
themselves, ready to do his behest; and though London was in
flames, and the house almost as light as day, there were few that
did not sleep soundly on the night which followed that strange
eventful Sunday.

CHAPTER XVIII. WHAT BEFELL DINAH.

Dinah Morse and her niece Janet were faring sumptuously in Lord
Desborough's house, hard by St. Paul's Churchyard. His young wife
lay sick of a grievous fever, and he was well nigh distracted by
the fear of losing her.

Nothing was too good for her, or for the gentle-faced, soft-voiced
nurses who had come to tend her in her hour of need. The best of
everything was at their disposal; and it was no great source of
regret to them that several of the hired servants had fled before
their arrival, a whisper having gone through the house that her
ladyship had taken the plague.

Dinah and Janet had seen too much of the plague to be deceived by a
few trifling similarities in some of the symptoms. They were able
to assure the distracted husband that it was not the dreaded
distemper, and then they settled to the task of nursing like those
habituated to it; and so different were they in their ways from the
women he had seen before in the office of sick nurse, many of whom
were creatures of no good reputation, and of evil habits and life,
th