wned herself of earthly mould, to the
haughty one who took her stand above human sympathies--to Lady
Eleanore. There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had
lurked in that gorgeous mantle which threw so strange a grace around
her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the
delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed and was the last toil of
her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its
golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited
far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore and cried out
that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that between them
both this monstrous evil had been born. At times their rage and
despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red
flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another door,
they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets in bitter
mockery: "Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!"

One day in the midst of these dismal times a wild figure approached
the portal of the province-house, and, folding his arms, stood
contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook
fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At
length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade,
he took down the flag, and entered the mansion waving it above his
head. At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and
spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of
setting forth upon a journey.

"Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?" exclaimed Shute, extending
his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing here but
Death; back, or you will meet him."

"Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence," cried
Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. "Death and the
pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk
through the streets to-night, and I must march before them with this
banner."

"Why do I waste words on the fellow?" muttered the governor, drawing
his cloak across his mouth. "What matters his miserable life, when
none of us are sure of twelve hours' breath?--On, fool, to your own
destruction!"

He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the
staircase, but on the first landing-place was arrested by the firm
grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up with a madman's
impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his oppon