The Midnight Queen | Page 3

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This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.

The Midnight Queen
by May Agnes Fleming

CONTENTS.

I. The Sorceress
II. The Dead Bride
III. The Court Page
IV. The Stranger
V. The Dwarf and the Ruin
VI. La Masque
VII. The Earl's Barge.
VIII. The Midnight Queen.
IX. Leoline.
X. The Page, the Fires, and the Fall
XI. The Execution
XII. The Doom
XIII. Escaped
XIV. In the Dungeon
XV. Leoline's Visitors
XVI. The Third Vision
XVII. The Hidden Face
XVIII. The Interview.
XIX. Hubert's Whisper
XX. At the Plague-pit
XXI. What was Behind the Mask
XXII. Day-dawn
XXIII. Finis

THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN,

CHAPTER I.
THE SORCERESS.

The plague raged in the city of London. The destroying angel had gone
forth, and kindled with its fiery breath the awful pestilence, until all
London became one mighty lazar-house. Thousands were swept away
daily; grass grew in the streets, and the living were scarce able to bury
the dead. Business of all kinds was at an end, except that of the
coffin-makers and drivers of the pest-carte. Whole streets were shut up,
and almost every other house in the city bore the fatal red cross, and the
ominous inscription. "Lord have mercy on us." Few people, save the
watchmen, armed with halberts, keeping guard over the stricken houses,
appeared in the streets; and those who ventured there, shrank from each
other, and passed rapidly on with averted faces. Many even fell dead on
the sidewalk, and lay with their ghastly, discolored faces, upturned to
the mocking sunlight, until the dead-cart came rattling along, and the
drivers hoisted the body with their pitchforks on the top of their
dreadful load. Few other vehicles besides those same dead-carts
appeared in the city now; and they plied their trade busily, day and
night; and the cry of the drivers echoed dismally through the deserted
streets: "Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!" All who could do
so had long ago fled from the devoted city; and London lay under the
burning heat