fearing the watchmen who guarded houses supposed to be infected, and therefore shut up.  I confess that these last were people I would gladly have shunned, there being something so awful to me in the locked doors (marked with a great red cross, and ’Lord, have mercy on us’ writ large upon them) by which the poor fellows sat.  But Althea seemed to have said a long good-bye to fear.  And with questioning and listening, and piecing things together by little and little, she assured herself that Andrew must be in Newgate, if he lay in any London prison.  She had tried to find out by artful inquiries if any man had shown himself in London, announcing a coming judgment, and warning people to avoid it, as Andrew had proposed to do; on which people informed her of several such persons, but their descriptions answered not to our poor friend.

One man had cried up and down the streets, ’Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed,’ after the fashion of the prophet Jonah; and another had run about by day and by night, naked to the waist, and crying, ’Oh! the great and dreadful God!’ and no other words; which struck a great terror into all who saw and heard him; and yet a third, who was said to be a Quaker, acted more strangely; but he was known by name to those who told about him.  Also in all these tales there was something frantic and unreasonable, not like Andrew, nor like the way he had designed to act.

I think I myself saw one of these strange creatures.  It was my turn to be housekeeper, Althea wanting Will’s help to carry her purchases home that day.  Such a solitary day was very dismal and heart-sinking to me; and had it not been for my plan of writing this history, I know not how I could have borne it.  When it grew dusk I ventured to look out at a front window to see if my friends were coming; but what I saw was the light of torches coming up the street, which was the sign of a funeral, it being ordered that people should only bury at night; and presently came by a coffin borne of four, and a great many people following; for it was wonderful how people crowded to funerals at this time, as if desperate of their lives.  They stopt suddenly, to my terror, right in front of my window; but it was because of another crowd meeting them, and in its midst a tall man, moving very swiftly, and going straight before him.  He was stript to the waist; and I thought at first that the hair of his head was all in a flame of fire, but it was a chafing-dish of burning brimstone that he had set upon his head, and which glared through the darkness.  As he met the coffin he made a stand, and looked upon it.

[Illustration:  ‘I think I myself saw one of these strange creatures.’]