In other cases some had gardens and walls or palings between them and
their neighbors; or yards and back houses; and these, by friendship and
entreaties, would get leave to get over those walls or palings, and so go
out at their neighbors' doors, or, by giving money to their servants, get
them to let them through in the night; so that, in short, the shutting up
of houses was in no wise to be depended upon. Neither did it answer the end
at all; serving more to make the people desperate and drive them to violent
extremities in their attempts to break out.

But what was still worse, those that did thus break out spread the
infection by wandering about with the distemper upon them; and many that
did so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities and perished in
the streets or fields or dropped down with the raging violence of the fever
upon them. Others wandered into the country and went forward any way as
their desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go,
till faint and tired; the houses and villages on the road refusing to admit
them to lodge, whether infected or no, they perished by the roadside.

On the other hand, when the plague at first seized a family, that is to
say, when any one of the family had gone out and unwarily or otherwise
caught the distemper and brought it home, it was certainly known by the
family before it was known to the officers who were appointed to examine
into the circumstances of all sick persons when they heard of their being
sick.

I remember--and while I am writing this story I think I hear the very
shrieks--a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden about nineteen
years old and who was possessed of a very considerable fortune. The young
woman, her mother, and the maid had been out for some purpose, for the