midnights
`` You 'll forbid it , will you not , Doctor ? Pledge me ! '' `` I do better , sir ; I pledge myself . '' So the July suns rose up and moved across the beautiful blue sky ; the moon went through all her majestic changes ; on thirty-one successive midnights the Star Bakery sent abroad its grateful odors of bread , and as the last night passed into the first twinkling hour of morning the month chronicled one hundred and thirty-one deaths from yellow fever . The city shuddered because it knew , and because it did not know , what was in store . People began to fly by hundreds , and then by thousands . Many were overtaken and stricken down as they fled .