have come to no good.  My money is lost; my loans cannot be recovered.  Men are dead or fled to whom I looked for payment.  Half-finished houses are thrown back on my hands, since half London is empty.  And poor Frederick’s debts are like the sands upon the seashore.  I cannot meet them, but I cannot let others suffer for his imprudence and folly.  The old house on the bridge will have to go.  I must needs sell it so soon as a purchaser can be found.  It may be I shall have to hand it over to one of Frederick’s creditors bodily.  I had thought to end my days there in peace, with my children’s children round me.  But the Almighty is dealing very bitterly with me.  Wife and son are taken away, and now the old home must follow!”

Gertrude, who knew his great love for the house in which he had been born, well understood what a fearful wrench this would be, and her heart overflowed with compassion.

“O father! must it be so?  Is there no way else?  Methought you had stores of costly goods laid by in your warehouses.  Surely the sale of those things would save you from this last step!”

The Master Builder smiled a little bitterly.

“Truly is it said that wealth takes to itself wings in days of adversity.  I myself thought as you do, child—­at least in part; and today I visited my warehouses, to look over my goods and see what there were to fetch when men will dare to buy things which have lain within the walls of this doomed city all these months.  I had the keys of the place.  I myself locked them up when the plague forced me to close my warehouse and dismiss my men.  I saw all made sure, as I thought, with my own eyes.  But what think you I found there today?”

“O father! what?” asked Gertrude, and yet she divined the answer all too well; for she had heard stories of robbery and daring wickedness even during this season of judgment and punishment which prepared her for the worst.

“That the whole place had been plundered; that there was nothing left of any price whatever.  Thieves have broken in during this time of panic, and have despoiled me of the value of thousands of pounds.  Whilst my mind has been full of other matters, my worldly wealth has been swept away.  I stand here before you a ruined man.  And like enough the very miscreants who have used this time of public calamity for plunder and lawlessness may be lying by this time in the common grave.  But that will not give my property back to me.”

“Alas, father, these are indeed evil days!  But has no watch been kept upon the streets that such acts can be done by the evil disposed?  Is all property in the city at the mercy of the violent and wicked?”

“Only too much has vanished that same way, as I have heard from many.  Some owners are themselves gone where they will need their valuables no more, and others were careful to remove all they had to their own houses, or they themselves lived over their goods and could guard them by their presence.  That is where my error lay.  I gave your mother her will in this.  She liked not the shop beneath, and I stored my goods elsewhere.  Poor woman, she is dead and gone; we will speak no hard things of her weaknesses and follies.  But had she lived to see this day, she had grievously lamented her resolve to have naught about her to remind her of buying and selling.”