The Puritan extended his hand; the young man grasped it heartily. Greater difference of rank or faith, birth or years, could not have hindered the infallible brotherhood of those twain--alike stout, generous, and manful, loving their fellows and their God! CHAPTER III. “You look pale and gaze, And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, To see the strange impatience of the heavens: But if you would consider the true cause Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts, Why all these things change, from their ordinance, Their nature, and pre-formed faculties To monstrous quality, why, you shall find That Heaven hath infused them with these spirits To make them instruments of fear, and warning Unto some monstrous state.” JULIUS CÆSAR. They had at last entered London; it was a genial May day, warm and balmy, and the sun was beginning to descend the western sky. As they approached the city, numberless little companies, carefully avoiding contact with each other, met them on the road, leaving the vicinity of the pestilence; on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, with heavy wagons loaded with household stores and furniture, citizens, nobles, clergymen, and laborers, were alike flying for their lives. But in the quaint outskirts of the town there was still little difference perceptible. Men went about plying their ordinary business; shops were open; the stream of traffic had not yet received its final check. Only various features of change, singular and ominous, presented themselves here and there. Apothecaries’ booths abounded on every side, full of all manner of nostrums--remedies, and preventives for the fatal disease, before whose acknowledged presence London trembled. Almost as plentiful at street-corners and ends of alleys, were the brazen symbols of the astrologer, the mysterious signs of fortune-tellers, and other spiritual quacks, vending their perilous stuff for the relief of that craving, coward appetite of fear, at once foolhardy and timorous, which seeks to investigate the hidden fate of its own selfish future. Sometimes the twin empiricisms united in one person, were signified in signboard, or notice, at some much-frequented door. The singular excitement of the time was evident every where.