ndly hand. But an old slow man with a long white
beard had forestalled even the impetuous rush of the youthful bride
and bridegroom.

'Nay; now, good friends,' said Farmer Thomas Blaykling of Drawwell,
'my home is nigh at hand. For the next three days the Stranger is
mine. He must stay with me and I will bring him to Firbank Chapel on
Sunday. Come ye also thither and hear him again, and bring every
seeking man and woman and child in all these dales to hear him too;
and thereafter ye shall have him in your turn and entertain him where
ye will.'

II

The first three peaceful days after the Fair were spent by the young
preacher at Drawwell Farm, knitting up a friendship with its inmates
that neither time nor suffering was able thereafter to unravel.

'The house inhabited by the Blayklings may still be seen. Its thick
walls, small windows and rooms, with the clear well behind, must be
almost in the same condition as in the week we are remembering.'[6]

In later days many a 'mighty Meeting' was to be held in the big barn
that adjoins the small whitewashed house with its grey flagged roof.
Drawwell is situated about two miles away from Sedbergh, on the sunny
slope of a hill overlooking the River Lune, that here forms the
boundary between the two counties of Westmorland and Yorkshire.

There, under the shadow of the great fells, George Fox had time for
many a quiet talk with his hosts, in the days that followed the
Whitsuntide Fair. John Blaykling, the farmer's son, was a man of
strong character. He was afterwards to become himself a powerful
preacher of the Truth and to suffer for it when persecution came.
Moreover, 'he was a great supporter of them that were in low
circumstances in the world, often assisting them in difficult cases to
the exposing of himself to great hazards of loss.'

He had also an especial care for the feelings of others. On the Sunday
after the Fair he was anxious to take his guest to Firbank Chapel,
where the Seekers' service was to be held, high up on the hill
opposite Drawwell. Yet he seems to have had some misgivings that his
guest might be too full of his own powerful message to remember to
behave courteously to others, who, although in a humbler way, were
still trying to declare the Truth as far as they had a knowledge of
it. Fox writes in his Journal:

'And the next First day I came to Firbank Chapel, where Francis
Howgill and John Audland were preaching in the morning, and Joh