s infected by a distemper worse then the
plague. I thank you, lads, for your kindly thoughts towards him and
towards me, but I must e'en take this business into mine own hands.
Get you away, and take your sister with you. It is not well for
maids to be abroad in a city where such things can happen. Lord,
indeed have mercy upon us!"

CHAPTER VI. NEIGHBOURS IN NEED.

Gertrude Mason sat in the topmost attic of the house, leaning out
at the open window, and drinking in, as it were, great draughts of
fresh air, as she watched the lights beginning to sparkle from
either side of the river, and the darkening volume of water
slipping silently beneath.

This attic was Gertrude's haven of refuge at this dread season,
when almost every other window in the house was shuttered and
close-curtained; when she was kept like a prisoner within the walls
of the house, and half smothered and suffocated by the fumes of the
fires which her mother insisted on burning, let the weather be ever
so hot, as a preventive against the terrible infection which was
spreading with fearful rapidity throughout all London.

But Madam Mason's feet never climbed these steep ladder-like stairs
up to this eyrie, which all her life had been dear to Gertrude. In
her childhood it had been her playroom. As she grew older, she had
gradually gathered about her in this place numbers of childish and
girlish treasures. Her father bestowed gifts upon her at various
times. She had clever fingers of her own, and specimens of her
needlework and her painting adorned the walls. At such times as the
fastidious mistress of the house condemned various articles of
furniture as too antiquated for her taste, Gertrude would get them
secretly conveyed up here; so that her lofty bower was neither bare
nor cheerless, but, on the contrary, rather crowded with furniture
and knick-knacks of all sorts. She kept her possessions
scrupulously clean, lavishing upon them much tender care, and much
of that active service in manual labour which she found no scope
for elsewhere. Her happiest hours were spent up in this lonely
attic, far removed from the sound of her mother's plaints or her
brother's ribald and too often profane jesting. Here she kept her
books, her lute, and her songbirds; and the key of her retreat hung
always at her girdle, and was placed at night beneath her pillow.

This evening she had been hastily dismissed from her father's
presence, he having come in with agita