“Repent!” the voice croaked. “Awaken! Behold your peril, and by prayer and reparation set yourselves to avert it whiles yet it may be time. Within the Parish of St. Giles this week lie thirty dead of this dread pestilence, ten in St. Clement’s, and as many in St. Andrew’s, Holborn. These are but warnings. Slowly but surely the plague is creeping upon the city. As Sodom of old was destroyed, so shall this modern Sodom perish, unless you rouse yourselves, and cast out the evil that is amongst you.”
The crowd was in the main irreverently disposed. There was some laughter, and one shrill, persistent voice that derided him. The preacher paused. He seemed to lengthen before them, as he raised his arms to Heaven.
“They laugh! Deriders, scoffers, will you not be warned? Oh, the great, the dreadful God! His vengeance is upon you, and you laugh. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic. Therefore I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, and I will burn thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.”
Holles moved on. He had heard odd allusions to this pestilence which was said to be making victims in the outskirts and which it was alleged by some fools was a weapon of warfare wielded by the Dutch—at least, that it was the Dutch who had let it loose in England. But he had paid little heed to the matter, knowing that scaremongers are never lacking. Apparently the citizens of London were of his own way of thinking, if he might judge by the indifferent success attending the hoarse rantings of that preacher of doom.
As he moved on, a man of handsome presence and soldierly bearing, with the dress and air of a gentleman, considered him intently with eyes of startled wonder. As Holles came abreast of him, he suddenly stepped forward, detaching from the crowd, and caught the Colonel by the arm. Holles checked, and turned to find himself gravely regarded by this stranger.
“Either you are Randal Holles, or else the devil in his shape.”
Then Holles knew him—a ghost out of his past, as he was, himself, a ghost out of the past of this other; an old friend, a brother-in-arms of the days of Worcester and Dunbar.
“Tucker!” he cried, “Ned Tucker!” And impulsively, his face alight, he held out his hand.
The other gripped it firmly.