walk, her brother
accompanied her, and told her in confidence what he had not told to
his family--how Frederick Mason had been served by the irate old
lady, and what a sorry spectacle he had presented afterwards.

Dorcas laughed heartily at the story. She had no love for
Frederick, and she told her brother that she suspected he had been
the half-tipsy gallant who had striven to kiss her in the streets,
and had partially succeeded. This put Reuben into a great wrath,
and he promised whenever he could do so to come and escort his
sister home from the house in Allhallowes. True, the distance was
but very short, yet the lane to the bridge head was lonely and
narrow, and Frederick was known for a most ill-conditioned young
man.

Lady Scrope received Reuben in a demi-toilet of a peculiar kind,
and a very strange and wizened object did she appear. She thanked
him for the rebuke she had heard him administer to the roisterer,
enjoyed a hearty laugh over his wretched appearance, and then
proceeded to indulge her insatiable taste for gossip by demanding
of him all the city news, and what all the world there was talking
about.

"Since this plague bogey has got into men's minds I see nobody and
hear nothing," she said. "All the fools be flying the place like so
many silly sheep; or, if they come to sit awhile, their talk is all
of pills and decoctions, refuses and ointments. Bah! they will buy
the drugs of every foolish quack who goes about the streets selling
plague cures, and then fly off the next day, thinking that they
will be the next victim. Bah! the folly of the men! How glad I am
that I am a woman."

"Still, madam," said Reuben, taking his cue, "there be many noble
ladies who think it well to remove themselves for a time from this
infected city. Not that for the time being the city itself is
infected, and we hope to keep it free--"

"Then men are worse fools than I take them for," was the sharp
retort. "Keep the plague out of the city! Bah! what nonsense will
they talk next! Is it not written in the very heavens that the city
is to be destroyed? Heed not their idle prognostications. I tell
you, young man, that the plague is already amongst us, even though
men know it not. In a few more weeks half the houses in the very
city itself will be shut up, and grass will be growing in the
streets. We may be thankful if there are enough living to bury the
dead. Keep it out of the city, forsooth! Let them do it if they
can; I