This threw me into an amaze, since, as we
know, the moonlight is favourable, not hurtful, to the creatures
of the Moon; and Saturn, being friends with her, as you would
say, was hourly strengthening her evil influence. Yet these three
rats had been stricken dead in very moonlight. I leaned out of the
window to see which of Heaven's host might be on our side, and
there beheld I good trusty Mars, very red and heated, bustling
about his setting. I straddled the roof to see better.
'Jack Marget came up street going to comfort our sick in
Hitheram's field. A tile slipped under my foot.
Says he, heavily enough, "Watchman, what of the night?"
'"Heart up, Jack," says I. "Methinks there's one fighting for us
that, like a fool, I've forgot all this summer." My meaning was
naturally the planet Mars.
'"Pray to Him then," says he. "I forgot Him too this summer."
'He meant God, whom he always bitterly accused himself of
having forgotten up in Oxfordshire, among the King's men. I
called down that he had made amends enough for his sin by his
work among the sick, but he said he would not believe so till the
plague was lifted from 'em. He was at his strength's end - more
from melancholy than any just cause.
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