It struck four by Saint Paul's as Doctor Hodges, accompanied by Leonard and Nizza Macascree, issued from his dwelling, and proceeded towards Wood-street. The party was followed by a man leading a couple of horses, equipped with pillions, and furnished with saddle-bags, partly filled with the scanty luggage which the apprentice and the piper's daughter took with them. A slight haze, indicative of the intense heat about to follow, hung round the lower part of the cathedral, but its topmost pinnacles glittered in the beams of the newly-risen sun. As Leonard gazed at the central tower, he descried Solomon Eagle on its summit, and pointed him out to Hodges. Motioning the apprentice, in a manner that could not be misunderstood, to halt, the enthusiast vanished, and in another moment appeared upon the roof, and descended to the battlements, overlooking the spot where the little party stood. This was at the northwest corner of the cathedral, at a short distance from the portico. The enthusiast had a small sack in his hand, and calling to Nizza Macascree to take it, flung it to the ground. The ringing sound which it made on its fall proved that it contained gold or silver, while its size showed that the amount must be considerable. Nizza looked at it in astonishment, but did not offer to touch it.

"Take it!" thundered Solomon Eagle; "it is your dowry." And perceiving she hesitated to comply with the injunction, he shouted to Leonard. "Give it her. I have no use for gold. May it make you and her happy!"

"I know not where he can have obtained this money," observed Hodges; "but I am sure in no unlawful manner, and I therefore counsel Nizza to accept the boon. It may be of the greatest use to her at some future time."

His scruples being thus overcome, Leonard took the sack, and placed it in one of the saddle-bags.

"You can examine it at your leisure," remarked Hodges to Nizza. "We have no more time to lose."

Solomon Eagle, meanwhile, expressed his satisfaction at the apprentice's compliance by his gestures, and, waving his staff round his head, pointed towards the west of the city, as if inquiring whether that was the route they meant to take. Leonard nodded an affirmative; and, the enthusiast spreading out his arms and pronouncing an audible benediction over them, they resumed their course. The streets were silent and deserted, except by the watchmen stationed at the infected dwellings, and a few sick persons stretched on the steps of some of the better habitations. In order to avoid coming in contact with these miserable creatures, the party, with the exception of Doctor Hodges, kept in the middle of the road. Attracted by the piteous exclamations of the sufferers, Doctor Hodges, ever and anon, humanely paused to speak to them; and he promised one poor woman, who was suckling an infant, to visit her on his return.

"I have no hopes of saving her," he observed to Leonard, "but I may preserve her child. There is an establishment in Aldgate for infants whose mothers have died of the plague, where more than a hundred little creatures are suckled by she-goats, and it is wonderful how well they thrive under their nurses. If I can induce this poor woman to part with her child, I will send it thither."

Just then, their attention was arrested by the sudden opening of a casement, and a middle-aged woman, wringing her hands, cried, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair -- "Pray for us, good people! pray for us!"

"We "do" pray for you, my poor soul!" rejoined Hodges, "as well as for all who are similarly afflicted. What sick have you within?"

"There were ten yesterday," replied the woman. "Two have died in the night -- my husband and my eldest son -- and there are eight others whose recovery is hopeless. Pray for us! As you hope to be spared yourselves, pray for us!" And, with a lamentable cry, she closed the casement.

Familiarized as all who heard her were with spectacles of horror and tales of woe, they could not listen to this sad recital, nor look upon her distracted countenance, without the deepest commiseration. Other sights had previously affected them, but not in the same degree. Around the little conduit standing in front of the Old Change, at the western extremity of Cheapside, were three lazars laving their sores in the water; while, in the short space between this spot and Wood-street, Leonard counted upwards of twenty doors marked with the fatal red cross, and bearing upon them the sad inscription, "Lord have mercy upon us!"

A few minutes' walking brought them to the grocer's habitation, and on reaching it, they found that Blaize had already descended. He was capering about the street with joy at his restoration to freedom.

"Mistress Amabel will make her appearance in a few minutes," he said to Leonard. "Our master is with her, and is getting all ready for her departure. I have not come unprovided with medicine," he added to Doctor Hodges. "I have got a bottle of plague-water in one pocket, and a phial of vinegar in the other. Besides these, I have a small pot of Mayerne's electuary in my bag, another of the grand antipestilential confection, and a fourth of the infallible antidote which I bought of the celebrated Greek physician, Doctor Constantine Rhodocanaceis, at his shop near the Three-Kings Inn, in Southampton-buildings. I dare say you have heard of him?"

"I "have" heard of the quack," replied Hodges. "His end was a just retribution for the tricks he practised on his dupes. In spite of his infallible antidote, he was carried off by the scourge. But what else have you got?"

"Only a few trifles," replied Blaize, with a chap-fallen look. "Patience has made me a pomander-ball composed of angelica, rue, zedoary, camphor, wax, and laudanum, which I have hung round my neck with a string. Then I have got a good-sized box of rufuses, and have swallowed three of them preparatory to the journey."

"A proper precaution," observed Hodges, with a smile.