bidden to stay till her corpse was removed, for the nurse said she
was wanted in a dozen places at once, and that she had too much to
do with the sick to attend upon the dead."

"And thou wert willing to wait?"

"I could not leave her alone. Besides, I feared to walk the streets
till night. The nurse bid me not linger after the body was taken,
for no man knows when the houses will be shut up, so that none can
go forth who have been with an infected person. But it is not so
done yet, and I was free. But I dared not come home amongst you all
to bring, perhaps, death with me. I waited in the house till the
men and the cart came, and they brought a coffin and took poor
Patience away. They told me then that soon there would be no more
coffins, and that they would have to bury without them."

Janet paused and shuddered strongly.

"O mother, mother, mother!" she wailed, "what shall I do? What will
become of me? Shall I have to die in the streets, or to go to the
pest house? Oh, why do such terrible things befall us?"

The mother was weeping now, but the next moment she felt the touch
of her husband's hand upon her shoulder, and his voice said in its
quiet and authoritative way:

"What means all this coil and to do? Why does the child speak thus?
Tell me all; I must hear the tale.

"Janet, my girl, never ask the why and the wherefore of any of the