be intelligible to our modern
ears, "a body can but die once; and for aught I see, one might as easy
die of the Black Death as of the rheumatics that sets one's bones afire,
and cripples one as bad as being in one's coffin at once. So I be
a-going to look to poor Willum, as they say is lying groaning still upon
the kitchen floor, none having dared to go anigh him since he fell down
in a fit. And if I be took tending on him, I know that you will take
care of my old woman, and see that she does not want for bread so long
as she lives."

Joan put out her soft, strong hand and laid it upon the hard, wrinkled
fist of the old servant. There was a suspicious sparkle in her dark eyes.

"I will not disappoint that expectation, good Andrew," she said. "Go if
you will, whilst we think what may best be done for Bridget. Later on I
will come myself to look at William. I have no fear of the distemper;
and of one thing I am very sure -- that it is never kept away by being
fled from and avoided. I have known travellers who have seen it, and
have been with the sick, and have never caught the contagion, whilst
many fled from it in terror only to be overtaken and struck down as they
so ran. We are in God's hands -- forsaken of all but Him. Let us trust
in His mercy, do our duty calmly and firmly, and leave the rest to Him."

Later in the day, upheld by this same lofty sense of calmness and trust,
Joan, after doing all in her power to make comfortable the old nurse,
who was terribly distressed at hearing how her dear young lady had been
deserted, left her to the charge of Betty, and went down again through
the dark and silent house to the great kitchen, where William was still
to be found, reclining now upon a settle beside the glowing hearth, and
looking not so very much the worse for the seizure of the afternoon.

"I do tell he it were but the colic," old Andrew declared, rubbing his
crumpled hands together in the glow of the fire. "He were in a rare
fright when I found he -- groaning out that the Black Death had hold of
he, and that he were a dead man; but I told he that he was the liveliest
corpse as I'd set eyes on this seventy years; and so after a bit he
heartened up, and found as he could get upon his feet after all. It were
naught but the colic in his inside; and he needn't be afraid of nothing
worse."

Old Andrew proved right. William's sudden indisposition had been but the
result of fright and hard riding, followed by copio