The Sign of the Red Cross — Evelyn Everett-Green

"I don't believe a word of it " cried the Master Builder, with some heat of manner. "It is just an old scare, the like of which I have heard a hundred times ere now. Some poor wretch dies of the sweating sickness, or, at worst, of the spotted fever, and in a moment all men's mouths are full of the plague I don't believe a word of it "