Thomas.  But you know every vagrant person may by the laws of England be taken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement.

John.  But how shall they make me vagrant?  I desire only to travel on, upon my lawful occasions.

Thomas.  What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wander upon?  They will not be put off with words.

John.  Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion?  And do they not all know that the fact is true?  We cannot be said to dissemble.

Thomas.  But suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?

John.  Anywhere, to save our lives; it is time enough to consider that when we are got out of this town.  If I am once out of this dreadful place, I care not where I go.

Thomas.  We shall be driven to great extremities.  I know not what to think of it.

John.  Well, Tom, consider of it a little.

This was about the beginning of July; and though the plague was come forward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all Wapping, as I have observed before, and Redriff, and Ratdiff, and Limehouse, and Poplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, all both sides of the river from the Hermitage, and from over against it, quite down to Blackwall, was entirely free; there had not one person died of the plague in all Stepney parish, and not one on the south side of Whitechappel Road, no, not in any parish; and yet the weekly bill was that very week risen up to 1006.

It was a fortnight after this before the two brothers met again, and then the case was a little altered, and the’ plague was exceedingly advanced and the number greatly increased; the bill was up at 2785, and prodigiously increasing, though still both sides of the river, as below, kept pretty well.  But some began to die in Redriff, and about five or six in Ratdiff Highway, when the sailmaker came to his brother John express, and in some fright; for he was absolutely warned out of his lodging, and had only a week to provide himself.  His brother John was in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave of his master, the biscuit-maker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some biscuit-sacks, or bread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the same sacks to cover him.

Here they resolved (seeing all employment being at an end, and no work or wages to be had), they would make the best of their way to get out of the reach of the dreadful infection, and, being as good husbands as they could, would endeavour to live upon what they had as long as it would last, and then work for more if they could get work anywhere, of any kind, let it be what it would.

While they were considering to put this resolution in practice in the best manner they could, the third man, who was acquainted very well with the sailmaker, came to know of the design, and got leave to be one of the number; and thus they prepared to set out.