The Martyr at the Stiles. 83 



and its broad sjnnpathies, there is no mistaking the 

 thorough earnestness of the cottage preacher. He 

 believes what he says, and no persuasion, rhetoric, 

 or force could move him one jot. His congregation 

 approve his discourse with groans and various ejacu- 

 lations. Men of this kind won Cromwell's victories ; 

 but ,to-day they are mainly conspicuous for upright 

 steadiness and irreproachable moral character, min- 

 gled with some surly independence. They are not 

 ' agitators ' in the current sense of the term ; the 

 local agents of labor associations seem chosen from 

 quite a different class. 



Pausing once to listen to such a man, who was 

 preaching in a roadside cottage in a loud and excited 

 manner, I found he was describing, in graphic if 

 rude language, the procession of a martyr of the 

 Inquisition to the stake. His imagination naturally 

 led him to picture the circumstances as correspond- 

 ing to the landscape of fields with which he had been 

 from youth familiar. The executioners were drag- 

 ging the victim bound along a footpath across the 

 meadows to the pile which had been prepared for 

 burning him. When they arrived at the first stile 

 they halted, and 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 revil- 

 ing. 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 clinging to his belief, was committed to the 



