vanities,"
shrieked the preacher above the tumult. "You do profess a Sabbath, and
dress yourselves in fine apparel, and your women go with stretched
necks."

"Tush, tush! Beat him, stone him!"

"Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment," the preacher
replied, "and a babbler is no better. The lips of a fool will swallow
up himself."

The church bells were beginning to ring in the town, and the sound
came across the fields and was heard even above the mocking laughter
of the crowd.

"You have your steeple-houses, too," cried the preacher, "and the
bells of your gospel markets are even now a-ringing where your priests
and professors are selling their wares. But God dwells not in temples
made with hands. Oh, men of Preston, did I not prophesy that fire, and
famine, and plagues, and slaughter would come upon ye unless ye came
to the light with which Christ hath enlightened all men? And have ye
not the plague of the East at your doors already?"

"And who brought it, who brought it?" screamed more than one voice
from the crowd. "Who brought the plague to us from the East? Beat him,
beat him!" The mob, with many uplifted hands, swayed about the
preacher. "Your cities will be laid waste, the houses without man, and
the land be utterly desolate. And what will ye do, oh men of Preston,
in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from
far?"

The rabble had rushed past by this time, still hooting and howling at
the wild, fiery-eyed enthusiast at their head.

Ralph walked on to the town and speedily discovered the cause of the
black cloud which overhung it. An epidemic of an alarming nature had
broken out in various quarters, and fears were entertained that it was
none other than a great pestilence which had been brought to England
from the East.

Indescribably eerie was the look of Preston that Sunday morning. Men
and boys were bearing torches through the streets to disinfect them,
and it was the smoke from these torches that hung like a cloud above
the town. Through the thick yellow atmosphere the shapes of people
passing to and fro in the thoroughfares stood out large and black.

IV. Ralph had travelled thus far in the fixed determination of pushing on
to London, seeking audience of the King himself, and pleading for an
amnesty. But the resolution which had never failed him before began
now to waver. Surely there was more than his political offences
involved in the long series of disast