THE GREAT FOUR-MILE DAY. 281 
striking down in preference, the shining objects of 
public consideration and regard. I was among those 
who felt the winnowing of his wings as he flitted past 
my couch in quest of nobler trophies. 
All those who were not obliged to remain within the 
doomed precincts of the city, fled to places afar off; 
while such as mere necessity required to abide the pes- 
tilence, resorted to the most ingenious devices to escape 
its visitation. Those who ‘were overlooked by the De- 
stroyer in his wrath, were near being starved, as few 
country people dared bring marketing into the town, and 
those who did so, only ventured within interdicted limits 
at certain hours of the day, and right hastily did they 
retreat to their more salubrious abodes. Amid the 
general desolation, the incidents of woe were strangely 
mingled with those that cheated Death, momentarily, of 
his horrors. 
It were a scene that might have provoked the atten- 
tion of Atropos herself, and made her pause awhile in her 
terrible vocation, to smile upon the ludicrous means that 
terror invented to thwart the purposes of Destiny. The 
emaciated figures of the convalescent citizen, strangely 
contrasted with the stalwart frame of the hardy yeoman, 
whilst the cadaverous aspect of the former added to the 
grotesqueness of the besmeared faces of the latter. 
The farmer, moved either by compassion or love of 
gain to visit the town, as he penetrated the city as far 
as the market-house, would use amulets and bags of 
