174 MASTER SKYLARK

London Bridge, because there, although they might in no
wise see, it felt, at least, as if the world were still beneath
their feet.

At noon the air was muddy brown, with a bitter taste
like watered smoke; at night it was a blinding pall; and
though, after mid-December, by order of the Council, every
alderman and burgess hung a light before his door, torches,
links, and candles only sputtered feebly in the gloom, of
no more use than jack-o’-lanterns gone astray, and none
but blind men knew the roads.

The city watch was doubled everywhere; and all night
long their shouts went up and down—“’T is what o’clock,
and a foggy night!”—and right and left their hurrying
staves came thumping helplessly along the walls to answer
eries of “Murder!” and of “Help! Watch! Help!”
For under cover of the fog great gangs of thieves came
down from Hampstead Heath, and robberies were done in
the most frequented thoroughfares, between the very lights
set up by the corporation; so that it was dangerous to go
about save armed and wary as a cat in a crowd.

While such foul days endured there was no singing at
St. Paul’s, nor stage-plays anywhere, save at Blackfriars
play-house, which was roofed against the weather. And
even there at last the fog crept in through cracks and
crannies until the players seemed but moving shadows
talking through a choking cloud; and Master Will Shak-
spere’s famous new piece of “Romeo and Juliet,” which
had been playing to crowded houses, taking ten pound
twelve the day, was fairly smothered off the boards.