ey moved, ran down the dark staircase
and out into the street. There, a little way off, was the tall
spectre-like figure, still hugging in bearlike embrace the hapless
Frederick, and dancing the while a most weird and fantastic dance,
chanting some awful words which none could rightly catch, but the
burden of which was, "The dance of death! the dance of death! None
who dances here with me will dance with any other!"

"For Heaven's sake release him from that embrace!" cried the
mother, who knew that her son was smitten to death. "If all be true
that the maid hath said, he is not fit to die, and that embrace is
a deadly one!--O my son, my son! come back, come back!

"Mercy on us, here is the watch! We are undone!"

Indeed the trampling of many hasty feet announced the arrival of a
number of persons upon the scene. It seemed like enough to be the
constables or the watch; but the moment the newcomers appeared
round the corner, Dorcas, uttering a little shriek of joy and
relief, threw herself upon the foremost man, who was in fact none
other than Reuben himself--Reuben, followed closely by his brother
Dan, and they by several young roisterers, the boon companions of
Frederick.

It had chanced that almost as soon as Dorcas had run from Lady
Scrope's door, hotly pursued by Frederick, her brothers had come up
to fetch her thence. It was also part of that worthy's plan that
they should hear she had been carried off, though not by himself.
His half-tipsy comrades, therefore, who had come to see the sport,
immediately informed the young men that the maid had been pursued
by a Scourer in such and such a direction; and so quickly had the
brothers pursued the flying footsteps of the pair--guided by the
footmarks in the dusty and untrodden streets--that they had come
upon this strange and ghastly scene almost at its commencement, and
in a moment their practised eyes took in what had happened.

The open door marked with the ominous red cross, the troubled face
of the watchman, the ghastly apparition of the delirious
plague-stricken man, the horror depicted in the face of the
mother--all this told a tale of its own. Scenes of a like kind were
now growing common enough in the city; but this was more terrible
to the young men from the fact that the face of the unhappy and
half-fainting Frederick was known to them and that they understood
the awful peril into which this adventure had thrown him. They knew
the strength of delirious p