The aspect of the prison by this time was changed. The songs and merriment, the horseplay and loud laughter by which the men had at first endeavoured to keep up their hearts were gone. The country lads pined and languished in confinement; their cheeks grew pale and their eyes heavy. Then, the prison was so crowded that there was barely room for all to lie at night, and the yard was too small for all to walk therein by day. In the morning, though they opened all the shutters, the air was so foul that in going into it from the open one felt sick and giddy, and was sometimes fain to run out and drink cold water. Oh! the terrible place for an old man such as Sir Christopher! Yet he endured without murmuring the foulness and the hardness, comforting the sick, still reproving blasphemies, and setting an example of cheerfulness. The wounded men all died, I believe; which, as the event proved, was lucky for them. It would have saved the rest much suffering if they had all died as well. And to think that this was only one of many prisons thus crowded with poor captives! At Wells, Philip's Norton, Shepton Mallet, Bath, Bridgwater, Taunton, Ilchester, Somerton, Langport, Bristol and Exeter, there was a like assemblage of poor wretches thus awaiting their trials. I said that there was now little singing. There was, however, drinking enough, and more than enough. They drank to drown their sorrows, and to forget the horrid place in which they lay and the future which awaited them. When they were drunk they would bellow some of their old songs; but the brawling of a drunkard will not communicate to his companions the same joy as the music of a merry heart. While we were expecting to hear that the Judge had arrived at Salisbury, the fever broke out in the prison of Ilminster. At Wells they were afflicted with the small-pox, but at Ilminster it was jail fever which fell upon the poor prisoners. Everybody hath heard of this terrible disorder, which is communicated by those who have it to those who go among them--namely, to the warders and turnkeys, and even to the judges and the juries. On the first day after it broke out--which was with an extraordinary virulence--four poor men died and were buried the next morning. After this, no day passed but there were funerals at the churchyard, and the mounds of their graves--the graves of these poor countrymen who thought to fight the battles of the Lord--stood side by side in a long row, growing continually longer. We--that is, good Mrs. Prior and myself--sat at the window and watched the funerals, praying for the safety of those we loved.