o
your advantage? Will you not make a bargain with the king?"

"I have said I will not," rejoined Leonard.

"Then be warned by me," rejoined Grant. "Arouse your partner. Pack up
all your goods and make preparations for instant flight, for the danger
will invade you before you are aware of it."

"Is it fire?" demanded Leonard, upon whose mind the denunciations of
Solomon Eagle now rushed.

"You will see," replied Grant, with a terrible laugh. "You will repent
your determination when it is too late. Farewell."

"Hold!" cried Leonard, advancing towards him, and trying to lay hands
upon him, "I arrest you in the king's name."

"Off!" exclaimed Grant, dashing him forcibly backwards. And striking
down Blaize, who tried to stop him in the passage, he threw open the
street-door, and disappeared. Fearful of pursuit, Grant took a
circuitous route to Saint Paul's, and it was full half an hour after the
interview above related before he reached the cathedral. Just as he
passed through the small door, the clock tolled forth the hour of
midnight, and when he gained the mid aisle, he heard footsteps
approaching, and encountered his friends.

"We had given you up," said Chowles, "and fearing you intended us some
treachery, were about to do the job without you."

"I have been unavoidably detained," replied Grant. "Let us about it at
once."

"I have got the fire-balls with me," observed Hubert.

"It is well," returned Grant.

Quitting the cathedral, they proceeded to Thames-street, and tracking it
to Fish-street-hill, struck off on the right into an alley that brought
them to Pudding-lane.

"This is the house," said Chowles, halting before a two-storied wooden
habitation, over the door of which was suspended the sign of the "Wheat
Sheaf, with the name THOMAS FARRYNER, BAKER, inscribed beneath it.

"And here," said Hubert, "shall begin the great fire of London."

As he said this, he gave a fire-ball to Solomon Eagle, who lighted the
fuze at Chowles's lantern. The enthusiast then approached a window of
the baker's shop, and breaking a small pane of glass within it, threw
the fire-ball into the room. It alighted upon a heap of chips and fagots
lying near a large stack of wood used for the oven, and in a few minutes
the whole pile had caught and burst into a flame, which, quickly
mounting to the ceiling, set fire to the old, dry, half-decayed timber
that composed it.

II.

THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE FIRE.

Having seen th