From hence they passed along, and took in other dead bodies, till, as honest John Hayward told me, they almost buried him alive in the cart; yet all this while he slept soundly. At length the cart came to the place where the bodies were to be thrown into the ground, which, as I do remember, was at Mountmill; and, as the cart usually stopped some time before they were ready to shoot out the melancholy load they had in it, as soon as the cart stopped, the fellow awaked, and struggled a little to get his head out from among the dead bodies; when, raising himself up in the cart, he called out, "Hey, where am I?" This frighted the fellow that attended about the work; but, after some pause, John Hayward, recovering himself, said, "Lord bless us! There's somebody in the cart not quite dead!" So another called to him, and said, "Who are you?" The fellow answered, "I am the poor piper. Where am I?"--"Where are you?" says Hayward. "Why, you are in the dead cart, and we are going to bury you."--"But I ain't dead, though, am I?" says the piper; which made them laugh a little, though, as John said, they were heartily frightened at first. So they helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his business. I know the story goes, he set up[148] his pipes in the cart, and frighted the bearers and others, so that they ran away; but John Hayward did not tell the story so, nor say anything of his piping at all. But that he was a poor piper, and that he was carried away as above, I am fully satisfied of the truth of. It is to be noted here that the dead carts in the city were not confined to particular parishes; but one cart went through several parishes, according as the number of dead presented. Nor were they tied[149] to carry the dead to their respective parishes; but many of the dead taken up in the city were carried to the burying ground in the outparts for want of room. At the beginning of the plague, when there was now no more hope but that the whole city would be visited; when, as I have said, all that had friends or estates in the country retired with their families; and when, indeed, one would have thought the very city itself was running out of the gates, and that there would be nobody left behind,--you may be sure from that hour all trade, except such as related to immediate subsistence, was, as it were, at a full stop. This is so lively a case, and contains in it so much of the real condition of the people, that I think I cannot be too particular in it, and therefore I descend to the several arrangements or classes of people who fell into immediate distress upon this occasion. For example:--