some one to bury them. In many a village no single man was left
alive. Then at last the spring came with sunshine and health and
lightness and laughter--the greenest, sweetest, tenderest spring
that England had ever known--but only half of England could know
it. The other half had passed away with the great purple cloud.

Yet it was there in that stream of death, in that reek of
corruption, that the brighter and freer England was born. There
in that dark hour the first streak of the new dawn was seen. For
in no way save by a great upheaval and change could the nation
break away from that iron feudal system which held her limbs. But
now it was a new country which came out from that year of death.
The barons were dead in swaths. No high turret nor cunning moat
could keep out that black commoner who struck them down.

Oppressive laws slackened for want of those who could enforce
them, and once slackened could never be enforced again. The
laborer would be a slave no longer. The bondsman snapped his
shackles. There was much to do and few left to do it. Therefore
the few should be freemen, name their own price, and work where
and for whom they would. It was the black death which cleared the
way for that great rising thirty years later which left the
English peasant the freest of his class in Europe.

But there were few so far-sighted that they could see that here,
as ever, good was coming out of evil. At the moment misery and
ruin were brought into every family. The dead cattle, the
ungarnered crops, the untilled lands--every spring of wealth had
dried up at the same moment. Those who were rich became poor; but
those who were poor already, and especially those who were poor