e
another. Some would prefer to walk alone high up on the ridge; others
would choose a bevy of companions and chatter along the road under the
hill. Some would be thin, ascetic persons, who liked to stride along and
see how far they could go without eating or drinking; some would be
pleasant, good-tempered creatures, who would amble by dusty places and
be thankful for cool beer; some would eat or drink mechanically, filled
with a single thought of prayer and pilgrimage to a shrine. Some would
be always perverse, and because most people travelled by one path, or
halted at an easy spot, would choose deliberately another path, and halt
where others passed on. Some would determine, come what might of wind or
rain or sun, to sleep at a certain village at nightfall; others would
let the weather decide for them. The weather would decide much, and it
would choose differently for different travellers. One of the writers
who has discussed the problems of the Pilgrims' Way suggests that the
main route would vary with varying degrees of heat and cold. If the
weather were cold and wet, the pilgrims would travel on the chalk ridge;
and if it were hot, they would go by the leafy woodland path below. But
if I Were a pilgrim and the weather were hot, I should go by the top of
the ridge, so as to get the air and the view; probably I would go by the
ridge in any case, whatever the weather was.

If written proof were needed that the journeying pilgrims Were not
condemned to a sort of solemn observance of the rules of
"Follow-my-leader," or bound by uncomfortable routine like so many
Cook's tourists, it would not be difficult to find. From a paper on the
Pilgrims' Way, written by Major-General E. Renouard James, you may learn
that in 1463, nearly three hundred years after the first pilgrim
followed Henry II to Canterbury, St. Martha's chapel by Guildford--St.
Martha's being a corruption of "The Martyr's," that is, St. Thomas the
Martyr's chapel--was in need of repair. And so, through the Prior of
Newark, "forty days' indulgence was granted to such as should resort to
this chapel on account of devotion, prayer, pilgrimage, or offering; and
should there say Paternoster, the Angel's Salutation, and the Apostles'
Creed; or should contribute, bequeath, or otherwise assign anything
towards the maintenance, repair, or rebuilding of the same." But what
does that mean? It must mean that not all the pilgrims went into St.
Martha's to pray, or even we