Then began positive fighting. The poor patients had to be restrained by main force, until the Chaplain came, and by his great power over their minds, persuaded them to stay.
Every one was asking, "How came it amongst us?" and the mystery was explained when they were told of a bale of cloth for their tailor consigned to the house from the Levant, viâ Bristol, and which in all the long tedious voyage had retained the infection ever living in the East.
Day by day fresh victims were carried to the grave. The plague was probably simply a malignant form of typhus, nourished in some human hotbed to the highest perfection. The bacillus or germ is, we trust, extinct, but otherwise enough might be bred in a bottle to poison a county, as we have heard stated.
All at once the heaviest blow fell upon them.
Father Ambrose was walking in the grounds, taking rest of mind after intense mental and bodily exertion, when he felt a sudden throb of violent heat, followed by an intense chill and a sickening sensation accompanied by faintness. He took off his cassock—he saw the fatal swelling.
"My summons is come," he said. "Oh, my Father, I thank Thee for calling me home; but these poor sheep whom Thou hast committed to my care, what shall they do?"
Then he walked quietly to his cell and lay down on his bed. He had watched the disease in others; he entertained no hope of recovery. "In a few hours I shall see Him face to face Whom I have loved," said he.
They came and found him. Never was man more patient; but that mediæval idea of intense self-denial was with him to the last. He refused water: they thought him delirious.
"He would not drink," he said.
They saw his thoughts were on the Cross, and that he was treading the pathway opened by the Crucified One, and they said no more.