y from the window afraid; and there was the cat, that had been on a
chair, down in the corner, with her back up, staring at the cloud: and
then she began to run round the room like a mad thing, and presently
whisked out of the door when I opened it. And I went to find Mr. Marrett,
and he had not come in, and all the yard was quiet. I could only hear a
horse stamp once or twice in the stable. And then as I saw calling out
for some one to come, the storm broke, and the sky was all one dark cloud
from side to side. For three hours it went on, rolling and clapping, and
the lightning came in through the window that I had darkened and through
the clothes over my head; for I had gone to my bed and rolled myself
round under the clothes. And so it went on--and, my dear--" and Mrs.
Marrett put her head close to Isabel's--"I prayed to our Lady and the
saints, which I had not done since I was married; and asked them to pray
God to keep me safe. And then at the end came a clap of thunder and a
flash of lightning more fearful than all that had gone before; and at
that very moment, so Mr. Marrett told me when he came in, two of the
doors in St. Denys' Church in Fanshawe Street were broken in pieces by
something that crushed them in, and the stone steeple of Allhallow Church
in Bread Street was broken off short, and a part of it killed a dog that
was beneath, and overthrew a man that played with the dog."

Isabel could hardly restrain a shiver and a glance round the dark old
room, so awful were Mrs. Marrett's face and gestures and loud whispering
tone, as she told this.

"Ah! but, my dear," she went on, "there was worse happened to poor King
Hal, God rest him--him who began to reform the Church, as they say, and
destroyed the monasteries. All the money that he left for masses for his
soul was carried off with the rest at the change of religion; and that
was bad enough, but this is worse. This is a tale, my dear, that I have
heard my father tell many a time; and I was a young woman myself when it
happened. The King's Grace was threatened by a friar, I think of
Greenwich, that if he laid hands on the monasteries he should be as Ahab
whose blood was licked by dogs in the very place which he took from a
man. Well, the friar was hanged for his pains, and the King lived. And
then at last he died, and was put in a great coffin, and carried through
London; and they put the coffin in an open space in Sion Abbey, which the
King had taken. And in