ny. Some owners are themselves gone where they will need their
valuables no more, and others were careful to remove all they had
to their own houses, or they themselves lived over their goods and
could guard them by their presence. That is where my error lay. I
gave your mother her will in this. She liked not the shop beneath,
and I stored my goods elsewhere. Poor woman, she is dead and gone;
we will speak no hard things of her weaknesses and follies. But had
she lived to see this day, she had grievously lamented her resolve
to have naught about her to remind her of buying and selling."

"Ah, poor mother! I often think it was the happiest thing for her
to be taken ere these fearful things came to pass. The terror would
well nigh have driven her distracted. Methinks she would have died
of sheer fright. But, father, is all lost past recovery? Can none
of the watch or of the constables tell you aught, or help you to
recover aught?"

"Ah, child, in these days of death, who is to know so much as where
to carry one's questions? Watchmen and constables have died and
changed a score of times in the past two months. The magistrates do
their best to keep order in the city, but who can fight against the
odds of such a time as this? The very men employed as watchmen may
be the thieves themselves. They have to take the services of almost
any who offer. It is no time to pick and choose. I carried my story
to the Lord Mayor himself, and he gave me sympathy and pity; but to
look for the robbers is a hopeless task. It is most like that the
plague pits have received them ere now. The mortality in the lower
parts of the city is more fearful than it has ever been, and it
seems as though the summer heats would never end. Belike I shall be
taken next, and then it will matter little that my fortune has
taken unto itself wings."

Gertrude came and bent over him with a soft caress.

"Say not so, dear father. God has preserved us all this while. Let
us not distrust His love and goodness now."

"It might be the greater mercy," answered the Master Builder in a
depressed voice. "I am too old to start life again with nothing but
my broken credit for capital. As for you, child, your future is
assured. I could leave you happy in that thought. You would want
for nothing."

Gertrude raised her eyes wonderingly to her father's face. She had
laid the sleeping child in its cot, and had taken a place at her
father's feet.

"What mean you, father?"