"If all be true that the maid hath said, he is not fit to die, and that embrace is a deadly one!--O my son, my son! come back, come back! "Mercy on us, here is the watch! We are undone!" Indeed the trampling of many hasty feet announced the arrival of a number of persons upon the scene.

It seemed like enough to be the constables or the watch; but the moment the newcomers appeared round the corner, Dorcas, uttering a little shriek of joy and relief, threw herself upon the foremost man, who was in fact none other than Reuben himself--Reuben, followed closely by his brother Dan, and they by several young roisterers, the boon companions of Frederick.
It had chanced that almost as soon as Dorcas had run from Lady Scrope's door, hotly pursued by Frederick, her brothers had come up to fetch her thence.

It was also part of that worthy's plan that they should hear she had been carried off, though not by himself.
His half-tipsy comrades, therefore, who had come to see the sport, immediately informed the young men that the maid had been pursued by a Scourer in such and such a direction; and so quickly had the brothers pursued the flying footsteps of the pair--guided by the footmarks in the dusty and untrodden streets--that they had come upon this strange and ghastly scene almost at its commencement, and in a moment their practised eyes took in what had happened.
The open door marked with the ominous red cross, the troubled face of the watchman, the ghastly apparition of the delirious plague-stricken man, the horror depicted in the face of the mother--all this told a tale of its own.

Scenes of a like kind were now growing common enough in the city; but this was more terrible to the young men from the fact that the face of the unhappy and half-fainting Frederick was known to them and that they understood the awful peril into which this adventure had thrown him.

They knew the strength of delirious patients, and the peril of contagion in their touch.