"Lord have mercy on us." Few people, save the
watchmen, armed with halberts, keeping guard over the stricken
houses, appeared in the streets; and those who ventured there,
shrank from each other, and passed rapidly on with averted faces.
Many even fell dead on the sidewalk, and lay with their ghastly,
discolored faces, upturned to the mocking sunlight, until the
dead-cart came rattling along, and the drivers hoisted the body
with their pitchforks on the top of their dreadful load. Few
other vehicles besides those same dead-carts appeared in the city
now; and they plied their trade busily, day and night; and the
cry of the drivers echoed dismally through the deserted streets:
"Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!" All who could do so
had long ago fled from the devoted city; and London lay under the
burning heat of the June sunshine, stricken for its sins by the
hand of God. The pest-houses were full, so were the plague-pits,
where the dead were hurled in cartfuls; and no one knew who rose
up in health in the morning but that they might be lying stark
and dead in a few hours. The very churches were forsaken; their
pastors fled or lying in the plague-pits; and it was even
resolved to convert the great cathedral of St.
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