"I would fain offer consolation, and observe the nature of your illness," said Dismal. "I would inform the leech, or even summon other aid in your need."

"Who is it speaks?" said Drear, thrusting his head further out. "All, I see! Hence, screech-owl—bird of ill; hence, wretch, lest I come down and beat thee! Hence, hound, whose bark never boded aught but death to the sick man. We wanted but thy visit to make us certain of our fate."

So saying, Drear violently put up his shutter and withdrew.

"Ah," said Dismal, "you may talk, my master, till you've tired yourself. But I know all about it now. If I cannot get in, by my troth I'll take care to put a sign which shall hinder you from getting out. Plague or no plague, I'll cause them to look in upon you who have authority to do so." So saying. Master Dismal took a large lump of red ochre from his pocket, and with considerable care marked up a broad red cross upon the door. He then, as he knew it was about the hour the watch passed, quietly withdrew to the opposite side of the street, and ensconsing himself behind the buttress of a wall, waited the event.

In a short time the watch came up; they passed Master Dismal where he stood without discovering him and then proceeded to the very end of the street. According to their custom (in making the rounds at night) they then halted, ordered their pikes, trimmed their lights, and stood at ease for a few minutes, ere they returned down the other side of the street; examining each door they passed by holding up the light they carried.

At the first tenement they found nothing extraordinary, the fellow who carried the light, which was a sort of cresset at the end of a bar of iron, held it aloft, and as its lurid glare fell upon the house, it displayed its walls clear as in open daylight. "All right, pass," said the head constable, and so they passed on to the next.

Here the constable carrying the cresset was merely about to raise it and pass on, when, as he did so, the whole party were arrested in speechless alarm by a sign they knew too well from former visitation. "The plague!" said the first, in a voice modulated almost to a whisper. "The plague!" said the second, "why I heard not of it before." "The searcher's mark," said the second, "I knew not that he had been sent out." "Advance your light again, Diccon," said a third, "and observe if the house be padlocked up." "I see no fastening," said Diccon, "and yet, 'tis the searcher's mark, sure enough; pass on, in heaven's name, comrades;" and on passed the watch, no longer with measured tread, but with accelerated and fearful steps, to inform the headborough of what they had seen: Master Dismal stealing after them in a state of the most exuberant glee at his own conceit and its success.

The spread of the disease, as was usual at this period, was extremely rapid. Indeed, it had risen to some height in the town before the authorities would consent to believe it really existed. In such cases, and in former days, precautionary measures were seldom thought of. Men drove off all thought of the evil; when they found it was really amongst them, or what they feared, they kept to themselves. At first they turned sulky under the infliction, if we may so term it, barring up their doors and deserting the streets; they avoided each other as much as possible, seeking air and recreation and forgetfulness by taking to the wastes and commons around. Leaving their homes by the back doors, they almost deserted the streets in search of the necessaries of life. As it grew worse the town seemed depopulated, even before the disease had time to work, so empty were its streets.

But a few days had passed since all the out-door sports and diversions of the age and the season had been in full play. Those gay and jovial May-day games, in the quaint mazes of the wanton green; those rural fêtes and diversions—the wakes and revels—the May-pole dances—the parties of pleasure—into the shadowy desert unfrequented woods, and which the peasantry of old were so fond of, all had ceased as it were on the instant. The human mortals feared each other, a secret dread—however each member of a family kept the native colour of his cheek—was in the heart of each. The very air seemed infected, and tho aspect of the town took a ghastly hue. It smelt of death, men thought. Business stopped in it. No markets were attended. No strangers passed through it. It was a place infected, avoided, accursed.