Within the narrow doorway stood the priest, a small, slim man in rusty black, with a crucifix suspended from his rosary, which he held up before the crowd, who most of them crossed themselves with apparent devotion.
"Peace be with you, my children!" was his somewhat incongruous salutation to the blood-thirsty mob; and then turning his bright but benignant eyes upon Cuthbert, he said: "This is a leper house, my son.

Yet methinks thou wilt be safer here a while than in the street.

Dost thou fear to enter?
If thou dost, we must e'en talk where we are." "I have no fear," answered Cuthbert, who indeed only experienced a lively curiosity.
The priest seemed pleased with the answer, and drew him within the sheltering door; and Cuthbert followed his guide into a long, low room, where a table was spread with trenchers and pitchers, whilst an appetizing odour arose from a saucepan simmering on the fire and stirred by one of the patients, upon whom Cuthbert gazed with fascinated interest.
"He is well nigh cured," answered the priest.

"Our sick abide on the floor above; but there be not many here now.

The plague carried off above half our number last year.
"But now of thine own matters, boy: how comest thou hither?
Thou art a bold lad to venture a stranger into these haunts, unless thou be fleeing a worse peril from the arm of the law; and neither thy face nor thy dress looks like that.