suckled by she-goats, and it is wonderful how well they
thrive under their nurses. If I can induce this poor woman to part with
her child, I will send it thither."

Just then, their attention was arrested by the sudden opening of a
casement, and a middle-aged woman, wringing her hands, cried, with a
look of unutterable anguish and despair--"Pray for us, good people! pray
for us!"

"We _do_ pray for you, my poor soul!" rejoined Hodges, "as well as for
all who are similarly afflicted. What sick have you within?"

"There were ten yesterday," replied the woman. "Two have died in the
night--my husband and my eldest son--and there are eight others whose
recovery is hopeless. Pray for us! As you hope to be spared yourselves,
pray for us!" And, with a lamentable cry, she closed the casement.

Familiarized as all who heard her were with spectacles of horror and
tales of woe, they could not listen to this sad recital, nor look upon
her distracted countenance, without the deepest commiseration. Other
sights had previously affected them, but not in the same degree. Around
the little conduit standing in front of the Old Change, at the western
extremity of Cheapside, were three lazars laving their sores in the
water; while, in the short space between this spot and Wood-street,
Leonard counted upwards of twenty doors marked with the fatal red cross,
and bearing upon them the sad inscription, "Lord have mercy upon us!"

A few minutes' walking brought them to the grocer's habitation, and on
reaching it, they found that Blaize had already descended. He was
capering about the street with joy at his restoration to freedom.

"Mistress Amabel will make her appearance in a few minutes," he said to
Leonard. "Our master is with her, and is getting all ready for her
departure. I have not come unprovided with medicine," he added to Doctor
Hodges. "I have got a bottle of plague-water in one pocket, and a phial
of vinegar in the other. Besides these, I have a small pot of Mayerne's
electuary in my bag, another of the grand antipestilential confection,
and a fourth of the infallible antidote which I bought of the celebrated
Greek physician, Doctor Constantine Rhodocanaceis, at his shop near the
Three-Kings Inn, in Southampton-buildings. I dare say you have heard of
him?"

"I _have_ heard of the quack," replied Hodges. "His end was a just
retribution for the tricks he practised on his dupes. In spite of his
infallible antidote, he was carried