64 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
intimate friends, sent over to say that they liked the 
elder very much, but they could not call while he was 
on such terms with their ‘dear pastor.’ Two or three of 
the ministers who came by invitation to preach in the 
chapel, and who had becn friendly, did indeed call once, 
but were speedily given to understand by the leading 
members of the congregation that dinners and sleeping 
accommodation had been provided elsewhere, and they 
must not do so again. The ministers, being entirely in 
the power of the congregations, had to obey. In short,, 
the elder and his family were excommunicated, spiritually 
boycotted, interdicted, and cut off from social intercourse; 
without any of the magical ceremonies of the Vatican, | 
they were as effectually excommunicated as if the whole 
seventy cardinals and the Pope in person had pro- 
nounced the dread sentence. Ina great town perhaps 
such a thing would not be so marked or so much felt; 
in a little village where everybody knows everybody, - 
where thcre are no strangers, and where you must per- 
force come in contact constantly with persons you have 
known for years, it is a very annoying process indeed. 
There are no streets of shops to give a choice of butchers | 
and bakers, no competition of tea merchants and cheese-.. 
mongers, so that if one man shows a dislike to serving 
you, you can go on to the next and get better attention. « 
‘Take it or go without it’ is village law ; no such thing 
as independence; you must walk or drive into the 
nearest town, five miles away perhaps, if you wish to 
avoid a sour face on the other side of the counter. No- 
one will volunteer the smallest service for the excom- 
municant of the chapel; nothing could more vividly 
illustrate the command to ‘love one another.’ No one 
can imagine the isolation of a house in a country place 
interdicted like this. If the other inhabitants could find 
