but very short, yet the lane to the bridge head was lonely and
narrow, and Frederick was known for a most ill-conditioned young
man.

Lady Scrope received Reuben in a demi-toilet of a peculiar kind,
and a very strange and wizened object did she appear. She thanked
him for the rebuke she had heard him administer to the roisterer,
enjoyed a hearty laugh over his wretched appearance, and then
proceeded to indulge her insatiable taste for gossip by demanding
of him all the city news, and what all the world there was talking
about.

"Since this plague bogey has got into men's minds I see nobody and
hear nothing," she said. "All the fools be flying the place like so
many silly sheep; or, if they come to sit awhile, their talk is all
of pills and decoctions, refuses and ointments. Bah! they will buy
the drugs of every foolish quack who goes about the streets selling
plague cures, and then fly off the next day, thinking that they
will be the next victim. Bah! the folly of the men! How glad I am
that I am a woman."

"Still, madam," said Reuben, taking his cue, "there be many noble
ladies who think it well to remove themselves for a time from this
infected city. Not that for the time being the city itself is
infected, and we hope to keep it free--"

"Then men are worse fools than I take them for," was the sharp
retort. "Keep the plague out of the city! Bah! what nonsense will
they talk next! Is it not written in the very heavens that the city
is to be destroyed? Heed not their idle prognostications. I tell