68 A SPRING AND SUMMER IN LAPLAND. 



desecrate a place of worship with their mad 

 carousals. As the Yorkshireman would say, "I 

 fairly trimblcd" lest my turn should come next ; 

 or I might even have been regarded as a heathen 

 by these poor deluded wretches (for I was a 

 foreigner and did not communicate), and there 

 is no saying to what excesses their fana- 

 ticism might have led them. I had quietly en- 

 sconced myself in a comfortable pew furthest 

 from the door, and to bolt would have been im- 

 possible. Strange as it may appear to the English 

 reader, I must say I felt great satisfaction in 

 having my revolver in my pea-jacket pocket ; and 

 my fears were not altogether groundless, for it is 

 not long ago that the Laps, in just such a fit of 

 fanaticism as this, barbarously murdered one if 

 not two settlers up at the altar, flogged the priest 

 nearly to death with willow rods, and would have 

 taken his life if assistance had not arrived. Mean- 

 while, during all this uproar, the priest went on 

 with the communion service as if nothing was 

 taking place, the clerk and the choristers kept up 

 their monotonous chants amid such an uproar as 

 I'll be bound to say was never before heard in a 

 place of worship. I would give something to see 

 the countenance of a fashionable London beadle if 

 the spirit was suddenly to move his congregation 

 in this way ; and if it is true, as these fanatics tell 



