can I
do?--what can any man do?"

"Much may be done if there is resolution to attempt it," returned
Leonard. "I would recommend your worship to proceed, in the first place,
to the wharves on the banks of the Thames, and cause the removal of the
wood, coal, and other combustible matter with which they are crowded."

"Well thought of," cried the lord mayor. "I will go thither at once. Do
you stay here. Your advice will be useful. I will examine you touching
the incendiary to-morrow--that is, if we are any of us left alive, which
I don't expect. Lord, Lord! what will become of us?" And with many
similar ejaculations, he hurried off with the sheriffs, and the greater
part of his attendants, and taking his way down Saint Michael's-lane,
soon reached the river-side.

By this time, the fire had approached the summit of Fish-street-hill,
and here the overhanging stories of the houses coming so close together
as almost to meet at the top, the flames speedily caught the other side,
and spread the conflagration in that direction. Two other houses were
likewise discovered to be on fire in Crooked-lane, and in an incredibly
short space the whole dense mass of habitations lying at the west side
of Fish-street-hill, and between Crooked-lane and Eastcheap, were in
flames, and threatening the venerable church of Saint Michael, which
stood in the midst of them, with instant destruction. To the
astonishment of all who witnessed it, the conflagration seemed to
proceed as rapidly against the wind, as with it, and to be approaching
Thames-street, both by Pudding-lane and Saint Michael's-lane. A large
stable, filled with straw and hay, at the back of the Star Inn, in
Little Eastcheap, caught fire, and carrying the conflagration eastward,
had already conveyed it as far as Botolph-lane.

It chanced that a poor Catholic priest, travelling from Douay to
England, had landed that night, and taken up his quarters at the hotel
above mentioned. The landlord, who had been roused by the cries of fire,
and alarmed by the rumours of incendiaries, immediately called to mind
his guest, and dragging him from his room, thrust him, half-naked, into
the street. Announcing his conviction that the poor priest was an
incendiary to the mob without, they seized him, and in spite of his
protestations and explanations, which, being uttered in a foreign
tongue, they could not comprehend, they were about to exercise summary
punishment upon him, by hanging him to the