The wheels of some heavy vehicle, solemn and slow, were passing along the deserted road; then the clear echoes gave forth the hoarse tinkling of a bell. The silvery night-air seemed to soften it; yet the two girls in their quiet chamber shrank and trembled, and looked fearfully, in silent terror, into each other’s faces. Then there followed a voice, inarticulate in the distance. Alas! they knew too well what those terrible words would be. The sound came nearer--nearer; and Mercy started from her bed, and throwing herself at Edith’s feet, clasped her arms round her in the convulsive dependence of fear, as the voice rang sharp into the silent house: “Bring forth your dead!” A monotonous _usual_ cry to which the men had become terribly familiar, forgetting its horror--the sign of their sad vocation. It was the first time it had been heard in Hampstead, and the calamity was now fully come. Preaching day by day, fervent, untiring, strong, laboring in concert with his daughter in her mission of charity, venturing to speak comfort to the stricken at their very death-beds, the Puritan minister of Hampstead rested not, night nor day. And thus it advanced, by gradual degrees, and raged upon every side around them, while from the eastern quarters of the city, tidings came quick and frequent, of parish after parish smitten; now here, now there, marching on, resistless and omnipotent, breaking the feeble barriers set up to restrain it; cutting down, in dread rapidity, its thousands in a night, until at last the maddened people threw off all the restraints of prudence, and going about in a wild despair, more terrible than their former fears, proclaimed the blind confidence they had in the final extermination of all life from London. It was but a question of time, they said. Churches which had been shut when the pestilence reached to so fearful a height that men could not stir abroad without the deadliest peril, were opened again, and crowded with solemn congregations fearlessly despairing. The same spirit, in a less profane degree, came upon the two devoted faculties--physicians and clergymen. They began to have no hope--scarcely any expectation of surviving, and the great matter with them was, how to accomplish the most labor before the call should come.