Need it be told here how that fire was stayed? how the King and the Duke, his brother, rode in person at the head of a gallant band of men-at-arms and soldiers, and directed those measures—­long urged upon the Mayor, but never efficiently carried out—­of blowing up and pulling down large blocks of houses in the path of the flames, so that their ravages were stayed?  It was the King himself who saved Temple Bar and a part of Fleet Street, the fire being checked close to St. Dunstan’s in the west.  Lord Desborough superintended like operations at Pye corner, hard by Smithfield; whilst the good citizens, Harmer and Mason, took boat to the Tower as fast as possible, and with the assistance of the governor, and by the mandate of the King, checked the slowly advancing flames just as they had reached the very walls of the fortress itself.

The great and terrible fire was stayed ere nightfall.  True, the flames smouldered and even raged in the burning area for another day and night, but the spread of them was checked.  The citizens, recovering from their apathetic despair, and encouraged by the example of their King, no longer stood trembling by, but joined together to imitate his actions and sacrifice a little property to save much.

“Thank God, thank God, the peril is at an end!  The very flames have glutted themselves, and are sinking down into the smouldering heaps of the ruins they have wrought!” said Reuben, coming back on the Thursday evening from an expedition of inquiry and discovery.  “Terrible indeed is the sight, but the worst is now known.  Four hundred streets, ninety churches—­if what I heard be true—­and thirteen thousand houses—­fifteen wards destroyed, and eight more half burned!  Was ever such a fire known before?  Yet can we say, Heaven be praised that it has spread no further.  Verily, it seemed once as though nothing would escape!”

Gertrude, too, was full of excitement.

“Father has had a summons from the Lord Mayor.  He was urgently sent for soon after thou hadst gone.  O Reuben, dost think the King has remembered my words to him? dost think he has put in a plea for my father when the city is rebuilt?”

“It is like enough,” answered Reuben; “they say his Majesty does not forget when his word is plighted.  He will be a rich man if he be employed by the corporation.  And how goes the sick lady?”

“So well that my lord has taken her away by boat to a villa hard by Lambeth, where she will be quieter and more at rest than she could be here.  Janet and Dorcas have gone with her as her maids, her own servants having fled hither and thither.  She would fain have had Dinah, too, but Dinah was not willing.”

Husband and wife smiled a little at each other, and then Reuben said: 

“Thou, wilt have a stepmother soon, little wife.  How wilt thou like that?”

“Well enow, so it be Dinah,” answered Gertrude, smiling; “but there is the father coming in.  Prithee, let me run to him and hear his news!”