“Sir—so has Heaven dealt with me this day, that if I must needs hear now that he is dead—my only son … ’twould be the best tidings … in very truth!” THE RED DESOLATION THE RED DESOLATION I THE WATCHERS “I have seen many terrible sights in my life, Master Chitterley,—none so terrible as this.” Thus old Martin Bracy, Sergeant-Yeoman of the Tower of London, to the Lord Constable’s body-servant. His companion flung up trembling hands for all response. As old as the sergeant—whose head had grown white in the King’s service: at home in the civil wars, abroad in Charles’s regiment of Flanders—but of less solid metal, years had stricken him harder, and he had little breath to spare after his grievous ascent to the platform of the Beauchamp Tower. And as the two now stood, side by side, looking down from the great height over the stricken city, they might have served as types, one of green old age, the other of wintry senility. * * * * * The scene outspread below them was indeed such as to strike awe to the stoutest heart. It was the fifth of September, third day of the great fire; and nothing, it seemed, was like to arrest the spread of the red desolation until it had embraced the whole of the town. Under the canopy of black smoke, like some monster of nightmare, the fire crouched, spread, uncoiled itself; now it clapped ragged wings of flame high into the sky, now grasped new, unexpected quarters as with a stealthily outreached claw. The wind ran lightly from the east, so that, in cruel contrast, the sky was fair blue over their heads, while to the westward horizon it spread ensanguined, overhung with lurid clouds. * * * * * “If hell itself had broken open,” said Martin Bracy, “and were vomiting yonder, methinks it would scarce show us a more affrighting picture. Often these days, Master Chitterley, I have taken to minding me again of the Crop-Heads’ sayings—and I had a surfeit of them in my days of imprisonment, forever talking of Judgment! Aye, I would have my laugh at them, then. But now it comes back to me:— “‘_First the scourge of Plague; and thereafter_ (that is now) _the scourge of Fire_!’” He mused as the aged will, speaking his thought aloud:— “There was one Jedediah Groggins—Smite-Them-Hip-and-Thigh was the name he gave himself, but Smit’em-Grogs they used to call him (aye, and a smiter he was!)—who had charge of the jail at York, where I was caged awhile, ye wot, after Marston Moor—” Chitterley nodded his palsied head; his faded eyes looked out with scarce a flicker of comprehension on the present vision that so impressed the soldier; but his brain was still to be stirred by memories of the past.