“Make ready the best guest chamber in thy house, Gertrude, and thy husband and I will go and bring her hither.

“Come, lad, as thy mother saith, the child may be scared at the heat and the flames.  And my lady has many valuables to be rescued, too.  It would be shame that they should perish in the flames if these leap the street.  We will take the boat and moor it at Cold Harbour, and slip up by the side street out of the way of the smoke and the heat.  We can thus bring her and her goods with most safety here.  Marry that is well bethought!  We will lose not an hour.  One cannot tell at what moment the fire may change its direction.”

Reuben rose at once, and accompanied by two of the steadiest of the shopmen, they prepared to carry out their plan of seeking to rescue Lady Scrope and her valuables.

CHAPTER XVII.  SCENES OF TERROR.

“Father! sweet father! thank Heaven thou art come!  Methought we should be burned alive in this terrible house.  Methought perchance all of you had been burned.  O father! tell me, what is befalling?  It is like the last judgment, when all the world shall be consumed with fervent heat!”

Dorcas, with a white face and panting breath, stood clinging to her father’s arm, as though she would never let it go.  He soothed her tenderly, striving to pacify her terrors, but it was plain that she had been through some hours of terrible fear.

“My little bird, didst thou think we should leave thee to perish here?” asked the father, half playfully, half reproachfully; “and if so affrighted, why didst thou not fly home to thy nest?  That, at least, would have been easy.”

“Ah, but I could not leave my lady when all besides had fled—­even the two old creatures who were never afraid of remaining when the distemper was raging all around.  She stands at the window watching the flames devouring all else opposite, and it is hot enough there well nigh to singe the hair on her head; but she laughs and chuckles the while, and says the most horrible things.  I cannot bear to go anigh her; and yet I cannot leave her alone.

“O father, father! come and get her away.  She seems like one made without the power of fear.  The more that others are affrighted, the more she seems to rejoice!”

Dorcas and her father and brother were in the narrow entry upon which the back door of the house opened.  This alley led right down to the river, where the boat was moored under the charge of the two shopmen.  It would be easy to carry down any valuables and load it up, and then transport the intrepid old woman, when she had looked her fill, and when she saw her own safety threatened.

For it began to be evident that the flames would quickly overleap the gap presented by Thames Street.  They were gathering so fearfully in power that great flakes of fire detached themselves from the burning buildings and leaped upon other places to right and left, as though endowed with the power of volition.