“Ah, poor mother!  I often think it was the happiest thing for her to be taken ere these fearful things came to pass.  The terror would well nigh have driven her distracted.  Methinks she would have died of sheer fright.  But, father, is all lost past recovery?  Can none of the watch or of the constables tell you aught, or help you to recover aught?”

“Ah, child, in these days of death, who is to know so much as where to carry one’s questions?  Watchmen and constables have died and changed a score of times in the past two months.  The magistrates do their best to keep order in the city, but who can fight against the odds of such a time as this?  The very men employed as watchmen may be the thieves themselves.  They have to take the services of almost any who offer.  It is no time to pick and choose.  I carried my story to the Lord Mayor himself, and he gave me sympathy and pity; but to look for the robbers is a hopeless task.  It is most like that the plague pits have received them ere now.  The mortality in the lower parts of the city is more fearful than it has ever been, and it seems as though the summer heats would never end.  Belike I shall be taken next, and then it will matter little that my fortune has taken unto itself wings.”

Gertrude came and bent over him with a soft caress.

“Say not so, dear father.  God has preserved us all this while.  Let us not distrust His love and goodness now.”

“It might be the greater mercy,” answered the Master Builder in a depressed voice.  “I am too old to start life again with nothing but my broken credit for capital.  As for you, child, your future is assured.  I could leave you happy in that thought.  You would want for nothing.”

Gertrude raised her eyes wonderingly to her father’s face.  She had laid the sleeping child in its cot, and had taken a place at her father’s feet.

“What mean you, father?” she asked.  “I have only you in the wide world now.  If you were to die, I should be both orphaned and destitute.  What mean you by speaking of my future thus?  Whom have I in the wide world besides yourself?”

The father passed his hand over her curly hair, and answered with a sigh and a smile: 

“Surely, child, thou dost know by this time that the heart of Reuben Harmer is all thine own.  He worships the very ground on which thou dost tread.  His father and I have spoken of it.  Fortune has dealt more kindly with our neighbours than with me.  Good James Harmer has laid by money, while I have adventured it rashly in the hope of large returns.  This calamity has but checked his work for these months; when the scourge is past, he will reopen business once more, and will find himself but little the poorer.  He is a wiser man than I have been; and his wife and sons have all been helpful to him.  The love of Reuben Harmer is my assurance for thy future welfare.  Thou wilt never want so long as they have a roof over their heads.