52 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
images and trampled on the pride of kings in the days 
of Charles I. The translation of the Bible cut off 
Charles I.’s head by letting loose such a flood of iron- 
fisted controversy, and to any one who has read the 
pamphlets of those days the resemblance is constantly 
suggested. John Bunyan wrote about the Pilgrim. To 
this chapel there came every Sunday morning a man 
and his wife, ten miles on foot from their cottage home 
in a distant village. The hottest summer day or the 
coldest winter Sunday made no difference ; they tramped 
through dust, and they tramped through slush and mire; 
they were pilgrims every week. A grimly real religion, 
as concrete and as much a fact as a stone wall; a sort of 
horse’s faith going along the furrow unquestioning. In 
their own village there were many chapels, and at least 
one church, but these did not suffice. The doctrine at 
Bethel was the one saving. doctrine, and there they 
went. There were dozens who came from lesser dis- 
tances quite as regularly, the men in their black coats 
and high hats, big fellows that did not look ungainly 
till they dressed themselves up; women as red as 
turkey-cocks, panting and puffing ; crowds of children 
making the road odorous with the smell of pomade;. 
the boys with their hair too long behind; the girls with 
vile white stockings, all out of drawing, and without’a 
touch that could be construed into a national costume 
—the cheap shoddy shop in the country lane. All with 
an expression of Sunday goodness: ‘To-day we are 
good, we are going to chapel, and we mean to stay till 
the very last word. We have got our wives and families: 
with us, and woe be to any of them if they dare to look 
for a bird’s nest! This is business.’ Besides the foot 
people there come plenty in traps and pony-carriages, 
and some on horseback, for a certain class of farmers 
