Alison walked thrice her own length upon the shadowy road before she answered. It took a little time to get it straight. It wasn’t Joan’s soul that he was concerned about—thought one. He was putting her name with that of the leech—had he seen them together, and now was eaten with jealousy? She knew how it felt to be eaten with jealousy—thought two. If he believed that Joan played him false—put him off for another—it could not but help, his thinking that.... “Oh, aye!” said Alison. “I have seen them a dozen times walking and talking together in the forest. But what a sin, sir, if he should teach her heresy!” CHAPTER XI THE PLAGUE LATE that winter, after long immunity, black sickness came to the town with the great church and the castle, and cast a long, crooked finger across the river and in the direction of Hawthorn Village. In the streets of the town burned fires of juniper. Waking in the night you might hear the wheels of the death-cart. They stopped before this house, they stopped before that house. The thought trembled and shrank—one night will they stop before this house? In the daytime the bells were tolled. Hawthorn Village tolled no bells, for to toll bells savoured of “superstitious usages.” But it looked with a clammy terror at the black finger which had touched a farmhouse midway between village and town. The plague grew worse in the town. More and yet more houses were marked and shut. The richer sort and those who could left the place, scattered through the country, not always welcome where they appeared. The mass who must stay saw the horror increase. A pall came over the place; there grew an insistent and rapid murmur of prayers. Side by side with that occurred a relaxation and neglect of usual order. The strict rule in such cases was against people coming together in any manner of congregation whereby the infection might spread; but the watch grew sick and fear constantly sought companions. There was much drinking in alehouses and taverns, no little gathering together of one sort and another. Side by side with wild appeals and supplications to Heaven wavered a sick and wan determination to some sort of mirth. At times this spirit rose to dare-deviltry. Small crimes increased. The poor were the hardest stricken, seeing that for them starvation clanked behind disease. Theft and housebreaking grew common, while professional thieves might and did make a harvest feast. The church bells tolled. At night the death-carts increased in number, the closed houses increased in number, the juniper smoke rolled thicker and thicker.