CHAPTER V
REST IN LONDON
In the black and dismal cloisters of our Valhalla—for still for London's heroes it is "Victory or Westminster Abbey," though Nelson, who uttered the words, is buried under all the stones of St. Paul's—there is a small, pale mural tablet. "In memory of Elizabeth, Dear Child," it reads, and sets us thinking of all sorts of dead children, dear in their day, and now how utterly unremembered, as wavelets are forgotten! And recumbent before it is a blackened paving stone, smoothed with the attrition of thousands of the feet of Londoners, of American tourists, of Members of Parliament, of prostitutes, of school boys. It states that here lie the remains of so and so many monks who died of the plague so and so many centuries ago.
When I was last in that dim place a man with a quick, agitated step hurried up and down the cloisters like a dog nosing out a rabbit in a hedge. He had a penetrating eye, a sharp nose, and high, thin cheekbones. He caught my glance and suddenly stretched
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