The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense.

All kinds of horrifying stories go the rounds.

News has been brought by passengers on the stage that a man and his wife, living near the Illinois River, died within an hour of each other.

They were well at dawn.

At noon they were both under the black soil of the river's shore, buried by three stalwart sons, who carried their bodies in the bed clothing and let them down by it into hastily made graves.
Something has happened here.