But who is it cowers there in the ditch by the highway? A dried-up
little man with deathly-pale countenance, and clad in a black coat!
Flee, Wanderer! let him not gaze at you with his piercing gray eyes!
Beware! for that old man is the Plague-man!

The heart of the Wanderer sinks within him. Horrified he rushes away,
and thanks heaven when, in the gray of the morning, he sees again the
towers of his native town. Enraptured by the sight of home he believes
these towers with the dear, well-known faces can protect him; but the
old cripple has been quicker than he. Before break of day he has knocked
at the town-gate, and the gate-keeper, on opening it, has scarcely
looked into his gray eyes before he sank down as though some one had
felled him with an axe.

Then the gray old man begins his terrible work. Like a bat he slips into
all dwellings; no gate and no bolt is an obstacle to him. Right up into
the lofts he climbs and opens the most secret chamber. That threshold he
passes is doomed to the Black-death.

* * * * *

It had happened thus to a little town in Franconia, where but a few
houses remained untouched by the terrible plague. In this town there
lived a poor, honest couple with their child, a boy of nearly three
years. Their cottage lay on a small hill, and was divided from the road
by a little garden. People ascribed it to this that the awful spirit
for a long time had left their home untouched. But at last he seemed to
have found his way to even this out-of-the-way place.