The Martyr at the Stiles. 93 
to the stake. His imagination naturally led him to 
picture the circumstances as corresponding to the 
landscape of fields with which he had been from youth 
familiar. The executioners were dragging 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 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 faggots, and so 
on, bringing it home to the minds of his audience to 
whom faggots 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 
organised ; they labour from goodwill in the cause. 
