After a while he arose, and was about to proceed towards the portico, when, chancing to look at the top of the tower, he remarked that the figure had disappeared, and while wondering who it could be, he perceived a person emerge from one of the tall windows in the lower part of the tower.  It was Solomon Eagle, and he no longer wondered at what he had seen.  The enthusiast was without his brazier, but carried a long stout staff.  He ran along the pointed roof of the nave with inconceivable swiftness, till, reaching the vast stone cross, upwards of twelve feet in height, ornamenting the western extremity, he climbed its base, and clasping the transverse bar of the sacred symbol of his faith with his left arm, extended his staff with his right, and described a circle, as if pointing out the walls of the city.  He then raised his staff towards heaven to invoke its vengeance, and anon pointed it menacingly downwards.  After this he broke into loud denunciations; but though the apprentice could not hear the words, he gathered their purport from his gestures.

By this time a few masons had assembled, and producing their implements, commenced working at the blocks of stone.  Glancing at the enthusiast, one of them observed with a smile to his companion, “There is Solomon Eagle pronouncing his morning curse upon the city.  I wonder whether the judgments he utters against it will come to pass.”

“Assuredly, Phil Gatford,” replied the other mason, gravely; “and I look upon all the work we are now doing as labour thrown away.  Was he not right about the plague?  Did he not foretell the devouring scourge by which we are visited?  And he will be right also about the fire.  Since he has doomed it, this cathedral will be consumed by flames, and one stone will not be left standing on another.”

“It is strange, Ned Turgis,” observed Gatford, “that, though Solomon Eagle may always be seen at daybreak at the top of the tower or on the roof of the cathedral—­sometimes at one point and sometimes at another—­no one can tell where he hides himself at other times.  He no longer roams the streets at night, but you may remember when the officers of justice were in search of him, to give evidence against Mother Malmayns and Chowles, he was not to be found.”

“I remember it,” replied Turgis; “but I have no doubt he was hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the cathedral—­perhaps among the immense wooden beams of the clerestory.”

“Or in some of the secret passages or cells contrived in the thickness of the walls,” rejoined the first speaker.  “I say, Ned Turgis, if the plague increases, as there is every likelihood it will, Solomon Eagle will be the only preacher left in Saint Paul’s.  Neither deans, prebends, minor-canons, nor vicars will attend.  As it is, they have almost abandoned it.”

“Shame on them!” exclaimed Leonard Holt, who, being much interested in the conversation of the masons, had silently approached them.  “At this season, more than ever, they are bound to attend to their duty.”