His dreams of late had concerned themselves little with his worldly estate, and therefore his deep reverential admiration for Joan had not developed into anything of a definite purpose.  If he dreamed dreams of the future in which she bore a part, it was only of laying at her feet such laurels as he should win, without thinking of asking a reward at her hands, unless it was the reward of being her own true knight, and rescuing her from the power of the Sanghursts, father and son, who appeared to have regained their old ascendency over Sir Hugh and his son, and to be looking forward still to the alliance between the two families.

Joan was of more than marriageable age.  It was thought strange by many that the match was not yet consummated.  But the quietly determined resistance on the part of the girl herself was not without some effect; and although there were many rumours afloat as to the boundless wealth of the ill-famed father and son, it was not yet an affair of absolute certainty that they were in possession of the secret of the transmutation of metals.  So the match still hung fire, and Raymond received many bewitching smiles from the lady on the rare occasions when they met; and he thought nothing of the threat of Peter Sanghurst, being endowed with that fearless courage which does not brood upon possible perils, but faces real ones with quiet resolution.

John was sitting over his books in the pleasant western window one evening at the close of a hot September day, when he heard a quick footstep crossing the anteroom, and Raymond came in with a strange look upon his face.

“John,” he said, before his cousin could ask a single question, “it has come at last!”

“What has come?”

“The visitation —­ the sickness —­ the scourge of God.  I knew that Father Paul was looking into the future when he pronounced the doom upon this land.  It has come; it is amongst us now!”

“Not here —­ not in this very place!  We must have heard something of it had it been so nigh.”

“It has not yet reached this town,” answered Raymond, the same strange light shining in his eyes that John had observed there from his entrance.  “Listen, and I will tell thee all I myself know.  Thou knowest that I have been to Windsor, to meet my brother who is there.  Him I found well and happy, brave as ever, knowing naught of this curse and scourge.  But even as we talked together, there came a messenger from London in hot haste to see thy father, good John.  He had been straight despatched by the King with a message of dire warning.  A terrible sickness, which already men are calling by the name of Black Death, has broken out in the south and west of the land, and seems creeping eastward with these hot west winds that steadily blow.  It attacks not only men, but beasts and cattle —­ that is, it seems to be accompanied by a plague something similar in nature which attacks the beasts.  Word has been passed on by the monks of what is happening