It was a vexatious complication. But it must be accepted. So the Colonel trudged wearily to the Guildhall, going by sparsely tenanted, darksome city streets, where he saw more than one door marked with a cross and guarded by a watchman who warned all wayfarers to keep their distance. And the wayfarers, of whom he met by no means many, showed themselves eager enough to keep to the middle of the street, giving as wide a berth as possible, not only to those infected dwellings, but also to all persons whom they might chance to meet. Not a few of those whom Holles found abroad were officials whose appointment the pestilence had rendered necessary--examiners, searchers, keepers, and chirurgeons--each and all of them distinguishable at a glance by a red wand borne well displayed as the law prescribed, and all of them shunned as if they were themselves plague-stricken. It made the Colonel realize the extent of the spread of this infection which was now counting its victims by thousands. The extent of the panic he realized when he came at last to the Guildhall, and found it besieged by coaches, sedan-chairs, and a vast mob on foot. All here were come upon the same errand as himself; to procure the Lord Mayor’s certificate of health that should enable them to escape from this stricken city. Most of the day he waited in that throng, enduring the stifling heat and the pangs of hunger and of thirst. For the only hawkers moving in the crowd were vendors of preventive medicines and amulets against the plague. Instead of the cry of “Sweet oranges,” which in normal times would have been heard in such a gathering, and which he would now have welcomed, here the only cries were: “Infallible Preservative Against Infection,” “The Royal Antidote,” “Sovereign Cordial Against the Corruption of the Air,” and the like. He could ill afford to purchase the favour of the ushers and bribe them into according him some precedence. He must wait and take his turn with the humblest there, and, as he had arrived late, his turn did not seem likely to come that day at all. Towards evening--unlike the more prudent, who determined to remain in their ranks all night, that they might be among the first served next day--he departed empty-handed and disgruntled. Yet within the hour he was to realize that perhaps he had been better served by Fate than he suspected. In a sparsely tenanted eating-house in Cheapside, where he sought to stay the pangs of thirst and hunger--for he had neither eaten nor drunk since early morning--he overheard some scraps of conversation between two citizens at a neighbouring table. They were discussing an arrest that had been made that day, and in the course of this they let fall the words which gave pause to Colonel Holles. “But how was he taken? How discovered?” one of them asked.