thout some effect;
and although there were many rumours afloat as to the boundless wealth
of the ill-famed father and son, it was not yet an affair of absolute
certainty that they were in possession of the secret of the
transmutation of metals. So the match still hung fire, and Raymond
received many bewitching smiles from the lady on the rare occasions when
they met; and he thought nothing of the threat of Peter Sanghurst, being
endowed with that fearless courage which does not brood upon possible
perils, but faces real ones with quiet resolution.

John was sitting over his books in the pleasant western window one
evening at the close of a hot September day, when he heard a quick
footstep crossing the anteroom, and Raymond came in with a strange look
upon his face.

"John," he said, before his cousin could ask a single question, "it has
come at last!"

"What has come?"

"The visitation -- the sickness -- the scourge of God. I knew that
Father Paul was looking into the future when he pronounced the doom upon
this land. It has come; it is amongst us now!"

"Not here -- not in this very place! We must have heard something of it
had it been so nigh."

"It has not yet reached this town," answered Raymond, the same strange
light shining in his eyes that John had observed there from his
entrance. "Listen, and I will tell thee all I myself know. Thou knowest
that I have been to Windsor, to meet my brother who is there. Him I
found well and happy, brave as ever, knowing naught of this curse and
scourge. But even as we talked together, there came a messenger from
London in hot haste to see thy father, good John. He had been straight
despatched by the King with a message of dire warning. A terrible
sickness, which already men are calling by the name of Black Death, has
broken out in the south and west of the land, and seems creeping
eastward with these hot west winds that steadily blow. It attacks not
only men, but beasts and cattle -- that is, it seems to be accompanied
by a plague something similar in nature which attacks the beasts. Word
has been passed on by the monks of what is happening far away, and
already a great terror has seized upon many, and some are for flying the
country, others for shutting themselves up in their houses and keeping
great fires burning around them. The message to thy father was to have a
care for the horses, and to buy no new ones that might by chance carry
the seeds of the sickness within t