And then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow, and buried it there." He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of similar enigmas in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_: "Lo! a Riddle for the wise, In the which a Mystery lies.
RIDDLE.
"Some men are free whilst they in prison lie; Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.
CAUTION.
"He that can receive it may, He that cannot, let him stay, Not be hasty, but suspend Judgment till he sees the end.
SOLUTION.
"He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin, And he is fastest bound that's bound therein." In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"?
We, left him deprived of his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room, in Jewen Street.

It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in London?
A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith; its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up?
Three years only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O God, have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it answered! Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards Heaven, it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive city.

John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street, has heard the toll of the death-bells, and the nightlong rumble of the burial-carts, and the terrible summons, "Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets.

Why should he tarry in a doomed city, forsaken of God! Is not the command, even to him, "Arise and flee, for thy life"?
In some green nook of the quiet country, he may finish the great work which his hands have found to do.

He bethinks him of his old friends, the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the patient and gentle Ellwood.