"Silence!" shouted the officer of the gate-guard, striding out in his long rain-cloak and glaring about him, with tasselled stick upraised. The rain powdered his gilded French hat and laced vest, and he stepped back hastily under shelter.
There was perfect quiet for an instant, then a movement near me, a mutter, a quick surging of people, a cry: "Give room! Back there! Bear him up!"
A voice broke out, "He is starving; the smell o' meat sickens him!"
Two men staggered past, supporting a mere lad, whose deathly face hung on his rain-soaked cotton shirt.
"He has the spotted sickness!" muttered a chair-bearer near me; "it's death to take his breath! Let me pass!"
"The pest!" cried another, shrinking back, and stumbling away in a panic.
The officer watched the scene for a moment, then his heavy, inflamed face darkened.
"Back there! Be off, I say!" he bawled. "Ye stinking beggars, d'ye mean to poison us all with the pest? Turn out the gate-guard! Drive those filthy whelps up Cornhill!" he shouted to the corporal of the guard.
The soldiers came tumbling out of the gate-lodge, but before they could move on the throng another officer hurried up, and I heard him sharply recalling the soldiers and rebuking the officer who had given the order.
"No, no, that will not do," he said. "The town would flame if you drive the citizens from their own streets. Let them stand there. What harm are they doing?"