lbowing his way rudely past the master of
the house and the invited guest, John Story stalked ahead into the
bridal parlour and sat himself down deliberately in the best chair.
'I'm your first guest now, Mistress Anne,' he said with a chuckle.
Then lighting his pipe he threw his head back and made himself
comfortable--evidently intending to stay the evening. But his chief
care and intention was to patronise George Fox. He had been at Firbank
also, and he had remembered enough of the sermon there to repeat some
of the preacher's words jestingly to his face. He handed his lighted
pipe to George Fox, saying, 'Come, will you take a pipe of
tobacco?'--and added, mockingly, seeing his hesitation, 'Come, all is
ours!'

'But,' says George Fox, 'I looked upon him to be a forward bold lad;
and tobacco I did not take. But it came into my mind that the lad
might think I had not unity with the creation: for I saw he had a
flashy, empty notion of religion. So I took his pipe and put it to my
mouth, and gave it to him again to stop him lest his rude tongue
should say I had not unity with the creation.'

And soon after this, let us hope, John Story, with his tobacco and his
rude tongue, saw fit to take his leave, and remove his unwelcome
presence.

IV

Two more days of the 'wonderful fortnight' were passed in the
linen-draper's home at Crosslands before, on the Wednesday forenoon,
John Audland and his guest descended the dales of Westmorland and
climbed the steep, wooded glen that leads to Cammsgill Farm. There, at
the door, with hands outstretched in welcome, stood good John Camm and
his loving wife Mabel. Peeping behind them curiously at the Stranger
was their twelve-year-old son, Tom. At the windows of the farm were to
be seen the faces of the men-servants and maid-servants, for great was
the curiosity to see the Stranger of whom such great tidings had been
told. Among the serving-maids were two sisters, Jane and Dorothy
Waugh. Little did the eager girls imagine that the Stranger whom they
eyed so keenly was to alter the whole course of their lives by his
words that day; that, for both of them, the pleasant, easy, farm life
at Cammsgill was over, and that they were hereafter to go forth to
preach in their turn, to suffer beatings and cruel imprisonments, and
even to cross the seas, in order to publish the same Truth that he had
come to proclaim.

Tom Camm also, boy as he was, was never to forget that eventful
morning. Long