But, if all his brethren were bold and unwearying, the preacher, Vincent, was inspired. With the desperate energy and daring of a doomed man, he labored. No case so terrible that he refused to visit it; no sinful dying man so dangerous, but he would carry him those burning, living words, which could come from no lips but those of one who himself stood upon the very brink, and was conversant with the Powers of the world to come. Praying only to be taken last, that he might labor to the end, he preached, and prayed, and exhorted, through well-nigh every hour of those long days of summer; in the churches, in the streets, wherever men would pause to listen, the overwhelming torrent of his earnestness poured itself forth--impetuous, vivid, bold--the apostle of the time. Less known, and less observed, his neighbor, Master Franklin, labored with stubborn Saxon perseverance, and an obstinacy of purpose altogether his own. The _afflatus_ of enthusiastic zeal--the prophet-like might and vehement eloquence of the man who felt that on this forlorn hope he must die, was wanting in the case of his honest, laborious brother; and the duller man was the greater hero--because his work was done for the sole love of the Master who gave it, and not because itself was dear to the plain and loyal soul who made head bravely against all surrounding evils, for his Lord’s sake. And, strangely trim and dainty amid all these horrors, the gentle Master Chester held on valorously upon his own especial way. Something more cautious, perchance, than those--no whit less manful and courageous; the diverse moods laboring alike under the guidance of the One Divine and beneficent Spirit. It needs not that we should dwell upon the dark details of a picture never equaled in our country for the magnitude of its miseries; how households disappeared, leaving behind no survivor to mourn for the dead; how grass grew green, and lonely echoes took up their dwelling in the once crowded streets of olden London; and how, from the consideration of earth’s most mighty city, there suddenly vanished all subjects of mortal interest, shriveling up like faded leaves before the fiery breathing of that universal Death. How, in the dreadful silence, the voice of God fell audibly upon the tingling ear of the distressed and trembling city, and how men came to know in those days--whatsoever they may have dreamed or doubted before--that beyond that present death stood a throne of righteous judgment, from whose tribunal their coward souls shrank and faltered, having a consciousness within less easily silenced than the voice of any other preacher--of sin. They could not shirk the knowledge then; old truths stood out so eternally alive and solemn, under the tracing of that dull, leaden light of death.