He charged treble the sum he would have asked half a year ago. In this time of evil those intrepid spirits who still plied their trades in the tainted city demanded a heavy fee for their labour; and it would have been hard to dispute their claim, since each man knew that he risked his life, and that the limbs which toiled to-day might be lifeless clay to-night. There was an awfulness about the time, a taste and odour of death mixed with all the common things of daily life, a morbid dwelling upon thoughts of corruption, a feverish expectancy of the end of all things, which no man can rightly conceive who has not passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Angela paid the man his price without question. She stepped lightly from the boat, while he deposited her two small leather-covered trunks on the stone landing-place in front of the Italian terrace which occupied the whole length of the façade. She went up a flight of marble steps, to a door facing the river. Here she rang a bell which pealed long and loud over the quiet water, a bell that must have been heard upon the Surrey shore. Yet no one opened the great oak door; and Angela had a sudden sinking at the heart as the slow minutes passed and brought no sound of footsteps within, no scrooping of a bolt to betoken the opening of the door. “Belike the house is deserted, madam,” said the boatman, who had moored his wherry to the landing-stage, and had carried the two trunks to the doorstep. “You had best try if the door be fastened or no. Stay!” he cried suddenly, pointing upwards, “Go not in, madam, for your life! Look at the red cross on the door, the sign of a plague-stricken house.” Angela looked up with awe and horror. A great cross was smeared upon the door with red paint, and above it some one had scrawled the words, “Lord, have mercy upon us!” And the sister she loved, and the children whose faces she had never seen, were within that house, sick and in peril of death, perhaps dying—or dead! She did not hesitate for an instant, but took hold of the heavy iron ring which served as a handle for the door and tried to open it. “I have no fear for myself,” she said to the boatman; “I have nursed the sick and the fever-stricken, and am not afraid of contagion—and there are those within whom I love. Good night, friend.” The handle of the door turned somewhat stiffly in her hand, but it did turn, and the door opened, and she stood upon the threshold looking into a vast hall that was wrapped in shadow, save for a shaft of golden light that streamed from an oval window on the staircase. Other windows there were on each side of the door, shuttered and barred. Seeing her enter the house, the old Cromwellian shrugged his shoulders, shook his head despondently, shoved the two trunks hastily over the threshold, ran back to his boat, and pushed off. “God guard thy young life, mistress!” he cried, and the wherry shot out into the stream.