hem. Men say that the people of London
are very confident that they can keep the sickness away from entering
their walls, by maintaining a careful guard upon the city gates. At
Windsor, I left the town in a mighty fear, folks looking already askance
at each other, as if afraid they were smitten with the deadly disease.
The news of its appearance is passing from mouth to mouth faster than a
horseman could spread the tidings. It had outridden me hither, and I
thought perchance thou mightest have heard it ere I reached home."

"Nay, I have heard naught; but I would fain hear more now."

"I know little but what I have already told thee," answered Raymond.
"Indeed, it is but little that there is to know at present. The disease
seems to me somewhat to resemble that described by Lucretius as visiting
Athens. Men sometimes suddenly fall down dead; or they are seized with
violent shiverings, their hair bristling upon their heads. Sometimes it
is like a consuming fire within, and they run raving mad to the nearest
water, falling in perchance, and perishing by drowning, leaving their
carcases to pollute the spring. But if it do not carry off the stricken
person for some hours or days, black swellings are seen upon their
bodies like huge black boils, and death follows rapidly, the victim
often expiring in great agony. I have heard that the throat and lungs
often become inflamed before the Black Death seizes its victim, and that
in districts where the scourge has reached, any persons who appear to
have about them even a common rheum are cast forth from their homes even
by those nearest and dearest, for fear they are victims to the terrible
scourge."

"Misfortune makes men cruel if it do not bind them closer together.
Raymond, I see a purpose in thy face -- a purpose of which I would know
the meaning. That light in thine eyes is not for nothing. Tell me all
that is in thine heart. Methinks I divine it somewhat already."

"Belike thou dost, good John," answered Raymond, speaking very calmly
and steadily, "for thou knowest the charge laid upon me by my spiritual
Father. 'Fear not, be not dismayed. A thousand shall fall beside thee,
and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.'
Such was the burden of his charge; and shall I shrink or falter when the
hour I have waited and watched for all these years has come like a thief
in the night? Good John, thou wast the first to teach me that there was
a truer, deeper ch