“It felt almost like a love token,” she said with a little blush, “for she told me I was not to open it save at the side of my betrothed husband!”

Now, amid breathless silence, she fitted the key into the lock and raised the lid.  That disclosed a layer of soft packing, which, when removed, left the contents exposed to view.

“Oh!” cried Joseph and Benjamin in tones of such wonder that Fido must needs rear himself upon his hind legs to get a peep, too; but he was soon satisfied, for he saw nothing very interesting in the yellow contents of the wooden box, which neither smelt nice nor were good for food.  But the lovers looked across at each other in speechless amazement.

For the box was filled to the brim with neatly piled heaps of golden guineas—­the first guineas ever struck in this country; so called from the fact that they were made of Guinea gold brought from Africa by one of the trading companies, and first coined in the year 1662.  And a quick calculation, based upon the counting of one of these upright heaps, showed that the box contained five hundred of these golden coins, which as yet were only just coming into general circulation.

“Oh,” cried Gertrude in amaze, “what can she have done it for?  And they call Lady Scrope a miser!”

“Misers often have strange fancies; and Lady Scrope has always been one of the strangest and most unaccountable of her sex,” said Reuben.  “I cannot explain it one whit.  It is of a piece with much of her inscrutable life.  All we can do is to give her our gratitude for her munificence.  She has neither kith nor kin to wrong by her strange liberality to thee, sweet Gertrude; nor can I marvel that she should have come to love thee so well.  Sweet heart, this money will purchase the house upon the bridge which thy father tells us he is forced to sell.  I had thought that I would buy it of him for our future home.  But thou hast the first claim.  At least, now the place is safe.  What is mine is thine, and what is thine is mine, and we will together make the purchase, and give him a home with us beneath the old roof.

“Will that make you happy, dear heart?  Methinks it will please Lady Scrope that her golden hoard should help in such an act of filial love!”

And Gertrude could only weep tears of pure happiness on her lover’s shoulder, and marvel how it was that such untold joy had come to her in the midst of the very shadow of death.

CHAPTER XIV.  BRIGHTER DAYS.

“The plague is abating! the plague is abating!  The bills were lower by two thousand last week!  They say the city is like to go mad with joy.  I would fain go and see what is happening there.  Prithee, good aunt, let me e’en do so much.  I shall take no hurt.  Methinks, having escaped all peril heretofore, I may be accounted safe now.”