WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 101 



held an argument with the prisoner, promising him 

 his life and safety if he would recant ; but he held 

 to the faith. 



Then they set out again, beating and torturing the 

 sufferer along the path, the crowd hissing and reviling. 

 At the next stile a similar scene took place promise 

 of pardon, and scornful refusal to recant, followed by 

 more torture. Again, at the third and last stile, the 

 victim was finally interrogated, and, still firmly cling- 

 ing to his belief, was committed to the flames in the 

 centre of the field. Doubtless there was some historic 

 basis for the story ; but the preacher made it' quite 

 his own by the vigour and life of the local colouring in 

 which he clothed it, speaking of the green grass, the 

 flowers, the innocent sheep, the fagots, and so on, 

 bringing it home to the minds of his audience, to 

 whom fagots and grass and sheep were so well known. 

 They worked themselves into a state of intense excite- 

 ment as the narrative approached its climax, till a 

 continuous moaning formed a deep undertone to the 

 speaker's voice. Such men are not paid, trained, or 

 organized ; they labour from good will in the cause. 



Now and then a woman, too, may be found who 

 lectures in the little cottage room where ten or fifteen, 

 perhaps twenty, are packed almost to suffocation ; or 

 she prays aloud and the rest respond. Sometimes, no 

 doubt, persons of little sincerity practise these things 

 from pure vanity and the ambition of preaching for 

 there is ambition in cottage life, as elsewhere ; but the 

 men and women I speak of are thoroughly in earnest. 



