Janet thanked God from the very bottom of her heart that night for having given to her such good and kindly parents, and earnestly besought that she might be spared, not only for her own unworthy sake, but for their sakes who had risked so much rather than that she should be an outcast from home at such a time of peril and horror.

CHAPTER IV.  JAMES HARMER’S RESOLVE.

It was with a grave face, yet with a brave and cheerful mien, that the worthy Harmer met his household upon the following morning.  He had passed the remainder of that strangely interrupted night in meditation and prayer, and had arrived now at a resolution which he intended to put into immediate effect.

His household consisted, it will be remembered, of his own family, together with apprentices, shopmen, and serving wenches.  To all of these he now addressed himself, told the story which his daughter had related of the treatment received in the house of the high-born lady by the poor girl stricken by the pestilence, and how it had made even his own child almost fear to enter her father’s house.

“My friends,” said the master, looking round upon the ring of grave and eager faces, “these things ought not to be.  In times of common trouble and peril the hearts of men should draw closer together, and we should remember that God’s command to us is to love our neighbour as ourself.  If we were to lie stricken of mortal illness, should we think it a Christ-like act for all men to flee away from us?  But inasmuch as we ought all of us to take every care not to run into needless peril, so must we take every right and reasonable precaution to keep from ourselves and our homes this just but terrible visitation, which God has doubtless sent for our admonition and chastisement.”

After this preface, Harmer proceeded to tell his household what he had himself resolved upon.  His two apprentices—­other than his own son Joseph—­were sons of a farmer living in Greenwich; and he purposed that very day to get his sailor son Dan to take them down the river in a boat, that he might deliver the lads safe and sound to their parents before further peril threatened, advising them to keep them at home till the distemper should have abated, and arranging with them for a regular supply of fresh and untainted provisions, to be conveyed to his house from week to week by water, so long as there should be any fear of marketing in the city.  He foresaw that very soon trade would come almost to a standstill.  The scare and the pestilence together were emptying London of all its wealthier inhabitants.  There would be soon no work for either shopmen or apprentices, and he counselled the former, if they had homes out of London to go to, to remain no longer in town, but to take their wages and seek safety and employment elsewhere, until the calamity should be overpast.  He also gave the same liberty to the serving wenches, one of whom came from Islington and the other from Rotherhithe.  And all of these persons having home and friends, decided to leave forthwith, to be out of the danger of infection, and of that still more dreaded danger of being shut up in an infected house with a plague-stricken person.