A slight derisive smile passed over the harsh features of the plague-nurse.

“You heed me not,” pursued the old woman.  “But a time will come when you will recollect my words.”

“I am content to wait till then,” rejoined Judith.

“Heaven grant you a better frame of mind!” exclaimed the old woman.  “I must take one last look of my son, for it is not likely I shall see him again.”

“Not in this world,” thought Judith.

“I conjure you, by all that is sacred, not to neglect him,” said the old woman.

“I have already promised to do so,” replied Judith, impatiently.  “Good-night, mother.”

“It will be a long good-night to me, I fear,” returned the dame.  “Doctor Hodges promised to send some blankets and medicine for poor Matthew.  The doctor is a charitable man to the poor, and if he learns I am sick, he may, perhaps, call and give me advice.”

“I am sure he will,” replied Judith.  “Should the man bring the blankets, I will tell him to acquaint his master with your condition.  And now take this lantern, mother, and get home as fast as you can.”

So saying, she almost pushed her out of the vault, and closed the door after her.

“At last I am rid of her,” she muttered.  “She would have been a spy over me.  I hope I have frightened her into the plague.  But if she dies of fear, it will answer my purpose as well.  And now for my husband.”

Taking up the lamp, and shading it with her hand, she gazed at his ghastly countenance.

“He slumbers tranquilly,” she muttered, after contemplating him for some time, adding with a chuckling laugh, “it would be a pity to waken him.”

And seating herself on a stool near the pallet, she turned over in her mind in what way she could best execute her diabolical purpose.

While she was thus occupied, the messenger from Doctor Hodges arrived with a bundle of blankets and several phials and pots of ointment.  The man offered to place the blankets on the pallet, but Judith would not let him.

“I can do it better myself, and without disturbing the poor sufferer,” she said.  “Give my dutiful thanks to your master.  Tell him my husband’s mother, old widow Malmayns, fancies herself attacked by the plague, and if he will be kind enough to visit her, she lodges in the upper attic of a baker’s house, at the sign of the Wheatsheaf, in Little Distaff-lane, hard by.”

“I will not fail to deliver your message to the doctor,” replied the man, as he took his departure.

Left alone with her husband a second time, Judith waited till she thought the man had got out of the cathedral, and then rising and taking the lamp, she repaired to the charnel, to make sure it was untenanted.  Not content with this, she stole out into Saint Faith’s, and gazing round as far as the feeble light of her lamp would permit, called out in a tone that even startled herself, “Is any one lurking there?” but receiving no other answer than was afforded by the deep echoes of the place, she returned to the vault.  Just as she reached the door, a loud cry burst upon her ear, and rushing forward, she found that her husband had wakened.