The doctor looked round and up at his approach. But Holles had no eyes at the moment for any but the patient, whose breast the physician had laid bare. One of the billmen was pointing out to the other a purplish tumid patch at the base of the sufferer’s throat. His eyes were round, his face grave, and his voice came hushed and startled. “See! The tokens!” he said to his companion. And now the doctor spoke, addressing Holles. “You would do well not to approach more closely, sir.” “Is it ... the plague?” quoth Holles in a quiet voice. The doctor nodded, pointing to the purple patch. “The tokens are very plain to see,” he said. “I beg, sir, that you will go.” And on that he once more held the handkerchief to his mouth and nostrils, and turned his shoulder upon the Colonel. Holles withdrew as he was bidden, moving slowly and thoughtfully, stricken by the first sight of the plague at work upon a fellow-creature. As he approached the edges of the crowd, which, keeping its distance, yet stood at gaze as crowds will, he observed that men shrank back from him as if he were himself already tainted. A single thing beheld impresses us more deeply than twenty such things described to us by others. Hitherto these London citizens had treated lightly this matter of the plague. Not ten minutes ago they had been deriding and pelting one who had preached repentance and warned them of the anger of Heaven launched upon them. And then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, had come the stroke that laid one of them low, to freeze their derision and fill their hearts with terror by giving them a sight of this thing which hitherto they had but heard reported. The Colonel stalked on, reflecting that this event in Paul’s Yard had done more proselytizing for the cause of the Commonwealth than a score of advocates could have accomplished. It was very well, he thought. It was a sign. And if anything had been wanting to clinch his decision to throw in his lot with Tucker, this supplied it. But first to quench the prodigious thirst engendered by his long walk through that sweltering heat, and then on to Cheapside and Tucker to offer his sword to the revolutionaries. Thus he would assure himself of the wherewithal to liquidate his score at the Paul’s Head and take his leave of the amorous Mrs. Quinn, with whom he could not in any case have afforded now to continue to lodge. As he entered the common room, she turned from a group of citizens with whom she was standing to talk to follow him with her eyes, her lips compressed, as he passed on into his own little parlour, at the back. A moment later she went after him. He was flinging off his hat, and loosening his doublet to cool himself, and he gave her good-morning airily as if yesterday there had not been an almost tragic scene between them. She found his light-hearted and really tactful manner highly offensive, and she bridled under it. “What may be your pleasure, Colonel?” she demanded forbiddingly.