“I will stay,” replied Leonard.

“There will be one advantage, which I did not foresee, in closing my house,” remarked the grocer aside to the apprentice.  “It will effectually keep away this libertine earl.”

“Perhaps so,” replied the other.  “But I have more faith in my own vigilance than in bolts and bars.”

Bloundel and Leonard then returned to the shop, where the former immediately began to make preparations for storing his house; and in the prosecution of his scheme he was greatly aided by the apprentice.

The grocer’s dwelling, as has been stated, was large and commodious.  It was three stories high; and beneath the ground-floor there were kitchens and extensive cellars.  Many of the rooms were spacious, and had curiously carved fireplaces, walls pannelled with fine brown oak, large presses, and cupboards.

In the yard, at the back of the house, there was a pump, from which excellent water was obtained.  There were likewise three large cisterns, supplied from the New River.  Not satisfied with this, and anxious to obtain water in which no infected body could have lain, or clothes have been washed, Bloundel had a large tank placed within the cellar, and connecting it by pipes with the pump, he contrived an ingenious machine, by which he could work the latter from within the house—­thus making sure of a constant supply of water direct from the spring.

He next addressed himself to the front of the house, where he fixed a pulley, with a rope and hook attached to it, to the beam above one of the smaller bay windows on the second story.  By this means, he could let down a basket or any other article into the street, or draw up whatever he desired; and as he proposed using this outlet as the sole means of communication with the external world when his house was closed, he had a wooden shutter made in the form of a trap-door, which he could open and shut at pleasure.

Here it was his intention to station himself at certain hours of the day, and whenever he held any communication below, to flash off a pistol, so that the smoke of the powder might drive back the air, and purify any vapour that found entrance of its noxious particles.

He laid down to himself a number of regulations, which will be more easily shown and more clearly understood, on arriving at the period when his plans came to be in full operation.  To give an instance, however—­if a letter should be conveyed to him by means of the pulley, he proposed to steep it in a solution of vinegar and sulphur; and when dried and otherwise fumigated, to read it at a distance by the help of strong glasses.