162 THE DOVER ROAD 



hospitality waiting for them at the Maison Dieu. Not 

 that there was any lack of religious houses on the way. 

 Far from it, indeed. They had not proceeded much 

 farther than a mile when they came in those times to 

 the Hermitage of Bapchild, with the hermit standing 

 on the doorstep, scratching himself with one hand, 

 holding out a scolloj^ shell for alms in the other, and 

 conjuring them by the blessed Thomas and all the 

 hierarchy of saints to spare something for his altar. 

 The parish church of Bapchild, which was built in early 

 Norman times, before any one dreamed of Canterbury 

 becoming a place of pilgrimage, or the high-road 

 crowded with a varied concourse of miserable sinners 

 anxious to compound for their ill-deeds by visiting the 

 scene of the martyrdom, is situated beside a lane at 

 some distance from the road, and so was quite out of the 

 track of that alms-giving crowd. It grieved the 

 Vicar of Bapchild to see these free-handed folks going 

 by, with never a mark or even a silver penny coming 

 his way, and so he contrived to set up some sort of a cell 

 and chapel with a few exceedingly dubious bones in it, 

 supposed to be the reliques of saints ; but probably 

 grubbed up from his own churchyard. It did not 

 matter much whose reliques they were called, for that 

 was a credulous age, and so long as there were not two 

 skulls of Saint Paulinus on view, or more than a gross of 

 Saint Alphege's teeth to be seen at the numberless 

 shrines between London and Canterbury, the pilgrims 

 were not generally disposed to be critical. It was only 

 when Saint Frideswyde appeared, from the osseous 

 evidence of these shrines, to have as many arms as 

 Vishnu, or when Saint Antholin appeared, from equally 

 untrustworthy evidence, to have been in this life a 

 Double-headed Nightingale or a kind of Siamese Twins, 

 that men on pilgrimage became sceptical. But, after 

 all, if saints could perform one kind of a miracle, why 

 not another, and why should not Saint Alphege cause 

 his teeth to be increased, until a j^eck of them could 

 be gathered from the monasteries of Europe, or Saint 



