We can imagine children crying for bread, and their mother going out at last to try to find something for them to eat, and never coming back. Then the eldest boy would begin to be afraid that she had caught the plague and had died in the streets, and he would leave his little sisters and brothers and creep along the streets until he met the awful death-cart; and then he would ask, and perhaps the man would tell him where to go to find out about his mother, and someone might be able to describe a woman who had fallen down in the street seized by the plague, and had at once been carried off and buried. The boy would guess that that must have been his mother; and yet he could never be quite certain, for she had been buried in a plague-pit with dozens of others, and he would never see her. Perhaps he would beg a little oatmeal, and run back hastily to his brothers and sisters, and when he got there find them all frightened and crying, for the eldest girl was very sick. He might turn down her dress, and see on her neck the awful plague-spot, and know that she, too, would die. And very likely by the next day the whole of that family would be dead. Many people must have died of starvation, for all work was stopped, but for the money given by charitable persons. The King himself gave L1,000 a week. There is a story of a man who had a good deal of money, and he shut himself and his household up in his house, and allowed no member of his family to go out. The doors and windows were closed, so that it was all dark, and food was only got by tying a basket to a string and letting it down at a certain time each day, when a person who had been paid to do so filled it with food. In the morning the whole family had breakfast together in a lower room, and afterwards the children were sent up to play in the garret. In this way the greatest danger of infection was escaped.