es.

When it was over and the women had covered her, Hugh and Dick left the
room, for they could bear no more.

"I have seen sad sights," said Hugh, with something like a sob, "but
never before one so sad."

"Ay," answered Dick, "that of the wounded dying on Crecy field was a May
Day revel compared to this, though it is but one old woman who has gone.
Oh, how heavily they parted who have dwelt together these forty years!
And 'twas my careless tongue this morning that foretold it as a jest!"

In the hall they met the physician, who rushed wild-eyed through the
doorway to ask how his patients fared.

"Ah!" he said to them in French when he knew. "Well, signors, that
noble lady has not gone alone. I tell you that scores of whom I know
are already dead in Venice, swept off by this swift and horrible plague.
Death and all his angels stalk through the city. They say that he
himself appeared last night, and this morning on the tilting ground
by the quay, and by God's mercy--if He has any left for us--I can well
believe it. The Doge and his Council but now have issued a decree that
all who perish must be buried at once. See to it, signors, lest the
officers come and bear her away to some common grave, from which her
rank will not protect her."

Then he went to visit Sir Geoffrey. Returning presently, he gave them
some directions as to his treatment, and rushed out as he had rushed in.
They never saw him again. Two days later they learned that he himself
was dead of the pest.

That night they buried Lady Carleon in her son's grave, which Dick had
helped to prepare for her, since no sexton could be bribed to do the
work. Indeed these were all busy enough attending to the interment of
the great ones of Venice. In that churchyard alone they saw six buryings
in progress. Also after the priest had read his hurried Office, as
they left the gates, whence Lady Carleon's bearers had already fled
affrighted, they met more melancholy processions heralded by a torch or
two whereof the light fell upon some sheeted and uncoffined form.

"'Twixt earthquake and plague Murgh the Helper is helping very well,"
said Grey Dick grimly, and Hugh only groaned in answer.

Such was the beginning of the awful plague which travelled from the East
to Venice and all Europe and afterward became known by the name of
the Black Death. Day by day the number of its victims increased;
the hundreds of yesterday were the thousands of the morrow. Soon th