they left me. Then James Lancaster went
back again to look for James Nayler. So I was alone and came to a
ditch of water and washed me, for they had all dirted me, and wet and
mired my clothes, my hands and my face.

'I walked a matter of three miles to Thomas Hutton's, where Thomas
Lawson the priest lodged, who was convinced. And I could hardly speak
to them when I came in I was so bruised. And so I told them where I
had left James Nayler, and they went and took each of them a horse,
and brought him thither that night. And I went to bed, but I was so
weak with bruises that I was not able to turn me. And the next day,
they hearing of it at Swarthmoor, they sent a horse for me. And as I
was riding the horse knocked his foot against a stone and stumbled, so
that it shook me so and pained me, as it seemed worse to me than all
the blows, my body was so tortured. So I came to Swarthmoor, and my
body was exceedingly bruised.'

Even within the sheltering walls of Swarthmoor, this time persecution
followed. Justice Sawrey had not yet forgiven the Quaker for his
behaviour on the day of the riot. He must have further punishment. So
right up to Swarthmoor itself came constables with a warrant signed by
two Justices (Sawrey of course being one of them), that a certain man
named George Fox was to be apprehended as a disturber of the peace.
And clapped into gaol George Fox would have been, wounded and bruised
as he was, in spite of all that his gentle hostesses could do to
prevent it, had it not happened that, just as the constables arrived
to execute this order, the master of the house, good Judge Fell
himself, must needs return once more, in the very nick of time, home
to Swarthmoor. His mere presence was a defence.

He had been away again on circuit all this time that George Fox had
been so cruelly treated in the neighbourhood, and had therefore known
nothing of the rioting during his absence. Now that he was back at
home again, straightway everything went well. The roof seemed to grow
all at once more sheltering, the walls of the old hall to become
thicker and more able to protect its inmates, when once the master of
the house was safely at home once more.

The six girls ran up and down stairs more lightly, smiling with relief
whenever they met each other in the rooms and passages. Long
afterwards, in the troubled years that were to follow, when there was
no indulgent father to protect them and their mother and their friends