At length the time arrived when my dark ages of mystery and adoration were to to close. The pestilence so constantly hovering over the wretched wastes of devastated Germany had been brought to Netherby by a cousin of my mother's, who had come on a visit to us. He fell sick the day after his arrival, and died on the third day. That evening Tib, the dairywoman, sickened, and before the next morning, Margery, her daughter. A panic seized the household. My father accepted Lady Lucy's generous offer, to take charge of Roger and me, we happening to have been from the first secluded from all contact with the sick. Aunt Dorothy made a faint remonstrance. There were, said she, contagions worse than any plague. If her brother would answer for it, to his conscience, it was well. She, at least, would wash her hands of the whole thing. But my father had no scruples. "He only hoped," he said, "that Lady Lucy might touch us with the infection of her gracious kindliness; Olive would be only with her, and as to Roger and the rest of the household, if he was ever to be a true Protestant, the time must come when he must learn, if necessary, to protest." So much to Aunt Dorothy. To Roger himself, he said, in a low voice, as we were riding off, with his hand on the horse's mane,-- "Remember, my lad, there is no true manliness without godliness." Aunt Gretel watched and waved her hand to us from the infected chamber window where she sat nursing Margery; and when I opened my bundle of clothes that evening, I found in the corner a little book containing my mother's favorite psalms copied in English for us, the 46th (Dr. Luther's own psalm), the 23d, and the 139th. Thus armed, Roger and I sallied forth into our enchanted castle. To be disenchanted. Not to be repelled, but certainly to be disenchanted. Not by any subtle spell of counter-magic, or rude shock of bitter discovery, but by the slow changing of the world of misty twilight splendours, of dreams and visions, guesses and rumours, into a world of daylight, of sight and touch. My first disenchantment was the Lady Lucy's artificial curls. She allowed me to remain with her while her gentlewoman disrobed her that evening. I shall never forget the dismay with which I beheld one dainty ringlet after another, of the kind called "heart-breakers," disentangled from among her hair--itself still brown and abundant--and laid on the dressing-table. The perfumes, essences, powders, ointments, salves, balsams, crystal phials, and porcelain cups, among which these "heart-breakers" were laid, (mysterious and strange as they were to me who knew of no cosmetics but cold water and fresh air,) seemed to me only so many appropriate decorations of the shrine of my idol. But the hair was false, and perplexed me sorely, Puritan child that I was, brought up with no habits of subtle discernment between a deception and a lie.