III. The same day Ralph Ray, still travelling on foot, had approached the town of Preston. It was Sunday morning, but he perceived that smoke like a black cloud overhung the houses and crept far up the steeples and towers. Presently a tumultuous rabble came howling and hooting out of the town. At the head of them, and apparently pursued by them, was a man half clad, who turned about at every few yards, and, raising his arm, predicted woe and desolation to the people he was leaving. He was a Quaker preacher, and his presence in Preston was the occasion of this disturbance.

"Oh, Preston," he cried, "as the waters run when the floodgates are up, so doth the visitation of G.o.d's love pa.s.s away from thee, oh, Preston!"

"Get along with thee; thou righteous Crister," said one of the crowd, lifting a stick above his head. "Get along, or ye'll have Gervas Bennett aback of ye again."

"I shall never cease to cry aloud against deceit and vanities,"

shrieked the preacher above the tumult. "You do profess a Sabbath, and dress yourselves in fine apparel, and your women go with stretched necks."

"Tush, tush! Beat him, stone him!"

"Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment," the preacher replied, "and a babbler is no better. The lips of a fool will swallow up himself."

The church bells were beginning to ring in the town, and the sound came across the fields and was heard even above the mocking laughter of the crowd.

"You have your steeple-houses, too," cried the preacher, "and the bells of your gospel markets are even now a-ringing where your priests and professors are selling their wares. But G.o.d dwells not in temples made with hands. Oh, men of Preston, did I not prophesy that fire, and famine, and plagues, and slaughter would come upon ye unless ye came to the light with which Christ hath enlightened all men? And have ye not the plague of the East at your doors already?"

"And who brought it, who brought it?" screamed more than one voice from the crowd. "Who brought the plague to us from the East? Beat him, beat him!" The mob, with many uplifted hands, swayed about the preacher. "Your cities will be laid waste, the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. And what will ye do, oh men of Preston, in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far?"

The rabble had rushed past by this time, still hooting and howling at the wild, fiery-eyed enthusiast at their head.

Ralph walked on to the town and speedily discovered the cause of the black cloud which overhung it. An epidemic of an alarming nature had broken out in various quarters, and fears were entertained that it was none other than a great pestilence which had been brought to England from the East.

Indescribably eerie was the look of Preston that Sunday morning. Men and boys were bearing torches through the streets to disinfect them, and it was the smoke from these torches that hung like a cloud above the town. Through the thick yellow atmosphere the shapes of people pa.s.sing to and fro in the thoroughfares stood out large and black.

IV. Ralph had travelled thus far in the fixed determination of pushing on to London, seeking audience of the King himself, and pleading for an amnesty. But the resolution which had never failed him before began now to waver. Surely there was more than his political offences involved in the long series of disasters that had befallen his household? He reflected that every link in that chain of evil seemed to be coupled to the gyves that hung about his own wrists. Wilson's life in Wythburn--his death--Sim's troubles--Rotha's sorrow--even his father's fearful end, and the more fearful accident at the funeral--then his mother's illness, nigh to death--how nigh to death by this time G.o.d alone could tell him here--all, all, with this last misery of his own banishment, seemed somehow to centre in himself.

Yes, yes, sin and its wages must be in this thing; but what sin, what sin? What was the crime that cast its shadow over his life?

"As the waters run when the flood-gates are up," said the preacher, "so doth the visitation of G.o.d's love pa.s.s away from thee."

Of what use, then, would be the amnesty of the King? Mockery of mockeries! In a case like this only the Great King Himself could proclaim a pardon. Ralph put his hands over his eyes as the vision came back to him of a riderless horse flying with its dread burden across the fells. No sepulture! It was the old Hebrew curse--the punishment of the unpardonable sin.

He thought again of his stricken mother in the old home, and then of the love which had gone from him like a dream of the night. Heaven had willed it that where the heart of man yearned for love, somewhere in the world there was a woman's heart yearning to respond. But the curse came to some here and some there--the curse of an unrequitable pa.s.sion.

The church bells were still ringing over the darkened town.

Rotha was happy in her love; Heaven be with her and bless her! As for himself, it was a part of the curse that lay on him that her face should haunt his dreams, that her voice should come to him in his sleep, and that "Rotha, Rotha," should rise in sobs to his lips in the weary watches of the night.

Yes, it must be as he had thought--G.o.d's hand was on him. Destiny had to work its own way. Why should he raise his feeble hands to prevent it? The end would be the end, whenever and wherever it might come.

Why, then, should he stir?

Ralph had determined to go no farther. He would stay in Preston over the night, and set out again for the north at daybreak. Was it despair that possessed him? Even if so, he was stronger than before. Hope had gone, and fear went with it.

Take heart, Ralph Ray, most unselfish and long-suffering of men. G.o.d's hand is indeed upon you, but G.o.d Himself is at your right hand!

V. That day Ralph walked through the streets with a calmer mind. Towards nightfall he stepped into a tavern and secured a bed. Then he went into the parlor of the house and sat among the people gathered there, and chatted pleasantly on the topics of the hour.

The governing spirit of the company was a little man who wore a suit of braided black which seemed to indicate that he belonged to one of the clerkly professions. He was addressed by the others as Lawyer Lampitt, and was asked if he would be busy at the court house on the following morning. "Yes," he answered, with an air of consequence, "there's the Quaker preacher to be tried for creating a disturbance."

"Was he taken, then?" asked one.

"He's quiet enough now in the old tower," said the lawyer, stretching himself comfortably before the fire.

"I should have thought his tormentors were fitter occupants of his cell," said Ralph.

"Perhaps so, young man; I express no opinion."

"There was scarce a man among them whose face would not have hanged him," continued Ralph.

"There again I offer no opinion," said the lawyer, "but I'll tell you an old theory of mine. It is that a murderer and a hero are all but the same man."

The company laughed. They were accustomed to these triumphs of logic, and relished them. Every man braced himself up in his seat.

"Why, how's that, lawyer?" said a townsman who sat tailor-fashion on a bench; he would hardly have been surprised if the lawyer had proved beyond question that he swam swanlike among the Isles of Greece.

"I'll tell you a story," said the gentleman addressed. "There was an ancient family in Yorkshire, and the lord of the house was of a very splenetive temper. One day in a fit of jealousy he killed his wife, and put to death all of his children who were at home by throwing them over the battlements of his castle. He had one remaining child, and it was an infant, and was nursed at a farmhouse a mile away. He had set out for the farm with an intent to destroy his only remaining child, when a storm of thunder and lightning came on, and he stopped."

"Thought it was a warning, I should say," interrupted a listener.

"It awakened the compunctions of conscience, and he desisted from his purpose."

"Well?"

"What do you think he did next?"

"Cannot guess--drowned himself?"

"No, and this proves what I say, that a murderer and a hero are all but one. He surrendered himself to justice, and stood mute at the bar, and, in order to secure his estates to his surviving child, he had the resolution to die under the dreadful punishment of _peine forte_."

"What is that, lawyer?"

"Death by iron weights laid on the bare body until the life is crushed out of it."

"Dreadful! And did he secure his estates to his child by suffering such a death?"

"He did. He stood mute at the bar, and let judgment go against him without trial. It is all in black and white. The Crown cannot confiscate a man's estate until he is tried and condemned."

"What of an outlaw?" asked Ralph somewhat eagerly.

"A man's flight is equal to a plea of guilty."

"I had a comrade once," said Ralph with some tremor of voice; "he fled from judgment and was outlawed, and his poor children were turned into the road. Could he have kept his lands for his family by delivering his body to that death you speak of?"

"He could. The law stands so to this day."

"Think you, in any sudden case, a man could do as much _now?_"