red, child?"

"If the whim be on her, and she has naught else to amuse her, she
will bid me tell of the life at home, and of our neighbours and
friends," answered Dorcas. "But never has she spoke as she did
today. Nor can I guess why she would have speech with Reuben."

"I can guess shrewdly at that," said the young man. "It so befell
this morning that I found a party of roisterers at her door, who were
marking it with a red cross, as though it were a plague-stricken
house--as the Magistrates talk of marking them now if the distemper
spreads much further and wider. The bold lady had herself put these
fellows to the rout by pouring pitch upon them from a window above;
but I stopped to rebuke the foremost of them myself, and to erase
their handiwork from the door. I did not know that I was either seen
or known; but methinks my Lady Scrope has eyes in the back of her
head, as the saying goes."

"You may well say that!" cried Dorcas, with a laugh and a shrug.
"Never was there such a woman for knowing everything and everybody.
But she spoke not to me of any roisterers. Would I had been there
to see her pouring her filthy compound over them! She always has it
ready. How she must have rejoiced to find a use for it at last!"

"It is an evil and a scurvy jest at such a time to mock at the
peril which is at our very doors, and which naught but the mercy of
God can avert from us," said the master of the house, very gravely.

Then, looking round upon his assembled household, he added in the
same very serious way, "I have been this day into the heart of the
city. I have spoken with many of the authorities there. The Lord
Mayor and the Magistrates are in great anxiety, and I fear me there
can be no longer any doubt that the distemper is spreading
fearfully. It has not yet appeared within the city nor upon the
other side of the river; but in the western parishes it is
spreading every way, and they say that all who are able are fleeing
away from their houses. Perchance for those who can do so this may
be the safest thing to do. But soon they will not be permitted to
leave, unless they have a bill of health from the Lord Mayor, as in
the country beyond the honest folks are taking alarm, and are
crying out that we are like to spread the plague all over the
kingdom."

"I, too, have heard sad tales of the mortality," said Dinah,
raising her calm voice and speaking very seriously. "I met a good
physician, under whom I often laboured