touched the dress, and indifferently remarked:

"A bride, I should say; and an uncommonly handsome one too.
We'll just take her along as she is, and strip these nice things
off the body when we get it to the plague-pit."

So saying, he wrapped her in the sheet, and directing Ormiston to
take hold of the two lower ends, took the upper corners himself,
with the air of a man quite used to that sort of thing. Ormiston
recoiled from touching it; and Sir Norman seeing what they were
about to do, and knowing there was no help for it, made up his
mind, like a sensible young man as he was, to conceal his
feelings, and caught hold of the sheet himself. In this fashion
the dead bride was carried down stairs, and laid upon a shutter
on the top of a pile of bodies in the dead-cart.

It was now almost dark, and as the cart started, the great clock
of St. Paul's struck eight. St. Michael's, St Alban's, and the
others took up the sound; and the two young men paused to listen.
For many weeks the sky had been clear, brilliant, and blue; but
on this night dark clouds were scudding in wild unrest across it,
and the air was oppressingly close and sultry.

"Where are you going now?" said Ormiston. "Are you for
Whitehall's to night?"

"No!" said Sir Norman, rather dejectedly, turning to follow the
pest-cart. "I am for the plague-pit in Finsbury fields!"

"Nonsense, man!" exclaimed Ormiston, energetically, "what will