London had never been so bright since it had burned to the ground twenty-two years ago. And it had never sounded thus in all its ages. As Daniel's ears adjusted themselves to this quiet hill-top he could hear a clamor rising up from the city, not of guns or of cart-wheels but of human voices. Sometimes they were just babbling, each to his own, but many times they came together in dim choruses that swelled, clashed, merged, and collapsed, like waves of a tide probing and seeking its way through the mazy back-waters of an estuary. They were singing a song, Lilliburlero, that had become universal in the last few weeks. It was a sort of nonsense-song but its meaning was understood by all: down with the King, down with Popery, out with the Irish.