mightily. So to my bookbinder's with my boy, and there did stay late to
see two or three things done that I had a mind to see done, and among
others my Tangier papers of accounts, and so home to supper and to bed.

21st. Up, and while at the office comes news from Kate Joyce that if I
would see her husband alive, I must come presently. So, after the office
was up, I to him, and W. Hewer with me, and find him in his sick bed (I
never was at their house, this Inne, before) very sensible in discourse
and thankful for my kindness to him, and his breath rattled in his
throate, and they did lay pigeons to his feet while I was in the house,
and all despair of him, and with good reason. But the story is that it
seems on Thursday last he went sober and quiet out of doors in the morning
to Islington, and behind one of the inns, the White Lion, did fling
himself into a pond, was spied by a poor woman and got out by some people
binding up hay in a barn there, and set on his head and got to life, and
known by a woman coming that way; and so his wife and friends sent for.
He confessed his doing the thing, being led by the Devil; and do declare
his reason to be, his trouble that he found in having forgot to serve God
as he ought, since he come to this new employment: and I believe that, and
the sense of his great loss by the fire, did bring him to it, and so
everybody concludes. He stayed there all that night, and come home by
coach next morning, and there grew sick, and worse and worse to this day.
I stayed awhile among the friends that were there, and they being now in
fear that the goods and estate would be seized on, though he lived all
this while, because of his endeavouring to drown himself, my cozen did
endeavour to remove what she could of plate out of the house, and desired
me to take my flagons; which I was glad of, and did take them away with me
in great fear all the way of being seized; though there was no reason for
it, he not being dead, but yet so fearful I was. So home, and there eat
my dinner, and busy all the afternoon, and troubled at this business. In