self comfortably to listen, without any scruples, seeing
that the speakers were in a public place, and besides, the entrance to
the bridge was by this time so packed with people that he could hardly
have moved off the parapet had he wished.

The older man shook his head. 'I thought I had hewed him in pieces
before the Lord,' he said in a low voice, 'for no sooner was he silent
than I asked him if he knew what he spake, and what it was should be
damned at the last day. Whereat he did but fix his eyes upon me and
said that "it was that which spoke in me which should be damned." Even
as he spoke my old notions of religion glittered and fell off me, for
I knew that through him whom I despised as a wandering Quaker I was
listening to the Voice of God. He went on to upbraid me as a flashy
notionist and yet, even so, I was constrained to listen to him in
silence.'

The pastor's voice had sunk very low: James could hardly catch the
last words.

'Aye, no wonder,' rejoined the younger man, 'with those eyes he
seemeth to pierce the fleshly veil and to read the secrets of a man's
inmost heart. I, too, experienced this, the following market day, he
being then come to the market cross "a-publishing of truth" as he and
his followers term it, in their quaking jargon. The magistrates, godly
men, had sent the sergeants commanding them to stop his mouth.
Moreover, they had sent their wives as well, and even the sergeants
were less bitter against him than the women. For they declared that if
the Quaker dared to defile the noble market cross of Carlisle city by
preaching there, they themselves would pluck off the hair from his
head, while the sergeants should clap him into gaol. Nevertheless the
Quaker would not be stopped. Preach he did, standing forth boldly on
the high step of the cross.'

'And what said he?' enquired the older man.

'Right forcibly he declared judgment on all the market folk for their
deceitful ways. He spoke to the merchants as if he were a merchant
himself, beseeching them to lay aside their false weights and measures
and deceitful merchandize, with all cozening and cheating, and to
speak truth only to one another. Ever as he spoke, the people flocked
closer around him, hanging on his words as if he were reading their
secret hearts, so that the sergeants could not come nigh him for the
press to lead him away. Thus only when he had finished he stepped down
from the cross and would have passed gently away, but I a