As in those days there were none who knew how to treat this disorder, in general it was looked upon as the certain harbinger of death, when the terror and confusion which took place on its appearance, was deplorable in the extreme. Two of the farmer’s children, which had first been taken ill, now died; and a third in a day after, when Morris himself was discovered to be infected. Loud cries and lamentations became incessant day and night; and some of the neighbouring old cottage wives who offered their services came there to assist—and this to some of them was a welcome office, as on such occasions as watching the sick, or laying out the dead; feasting is as prevalent as at weddings. Among these old hen-wives and grannies, tales of superstition prevailed in abundance; some spoke of the corpse candles seen by them previous to the deaths of the young women of the house; others dilated on the awfulness of a spectral burial, where shadows of the living supported the bier of the departed towards the churchyard. One night, between twelve and one, while the three coffins and their contents presented a woeful sight, lying side by side on the long oak table, Morris, afflicted as he was, assisted his wife in supporting his fourth daughter, whose death they also deeply dreaded, as an old cottage woman, while she basted a loin of mutton roasting before the fire, dwelt much on the certainty of supernatural appearances, illustrating her convictions by instances of her own experience. All at once, the current of her discourse was arrested by a shudder that overcame and struck her dumb, on hearing a rumbling and irregular noise, as of falling furniture, which also terrified the group about the fire. The noise increased, and at last seemed as of somebody stumbling in his way in the dark; groans, mutterings, and approaching human steps succeeded:—some shrieked, some rose and ran to remote corners, covering their heads with their aprons, while others sat breathless, as if nailed to the bench, and dissolved in streams of perspiration, their eyes starting from their sockets—when a figure with the air and rush of a maniac darted in, tore the roasting meat from the string, and disappeared with it, uttering in a dismal hollow tone “O God, I am famished by these wretches!” The consciences of the farmer and his wife were dreadfully wrung, as they now recollected the poor apprentice boy Twm, whom they had left in the depth of the malady which had deprived them of three of their children, to live or die, as he might; nor would Morris allow anybody to rescue the meat, but snatching a loaf from the shelf, he entreated Twm to come in and eat his fill at the fire: but the youngster had entered his hay-loft, and with the ravenousness of a starved hound devoured his half raw prey in darkness. While yet the farmer, with tears of real penitence, was calling out to him, a loud scream from his wife convinced him that his fourth child was also dead.