HOW WE JOURNEYED UP TO YORKSHIRE; AND HOW WE WERE WELCOMED THERE.

Though I remember so plainly what passed on our last day in Milthorpe Manor-house, I am not very clear about our journey up to Yorkshire, which was tedious enough.  We kept to the king’s highway, and yet were sometimes put in much fear of thieves, but happily we fell in with none; the only notable thing that befell us was in leaving a little market town, I cannot call to mind its name, where we had stopped to dine.  We had ridden but a little way forth of the town when we heard a great din of shouting and hooting behind us, which made us women afraid; and presently a noisy rabblement of people came running up.  They were chiefly of the baser sort, both men and women, some very ragged, and some red-faced and half tipsy; one or two gentlemen in laced coats rode among them.  I thought at first they had some spite at us, but it proved not so.  We drew to the wayside to let them pass, and they went by, very disorderly, yelling and swearing, the women not less than the men, pushing and hauling some poor creature dragged along in their midst.  I looked earnestly to see who it might be, and presently discerned the person—­a tall thin man, in a kind of loose garment girded about him, and I think it was made of some hempen stuff, a kind of sacking.  This man was very pale, with longish dark hair hanging about his face, which, as I say, was pale indeed, but not dismayed; I think he even smiled when one struck him on the head, and another, pushing him, bade him, with a curse, go faster.  I saw the blood trickling a little from the blow that had alighted on his head, as they hurried him past.

Andrew, who saw all this as well as I did, looked full of horror.  He caught one of the hindmost of the rabble by the sleeve and asked him harshly, ‘What has this man done, and whither are you taking him?’ At which the man, turning towards us his red, jovial face, replies,—­

’It’s a mad Quaker, that took upon him this noon to stand up in our market-place, it being market day and every one mighty busy, and he tells us all to our face we were a set of cheating rogues, that he had marked our doings and seen how bad they were, and that he had a commission from God to bid us repent and amend, or a sudden dreadful judgment should fall on us.  Didst ever hear of such a fool?’

‘And what more did he,’ says Andrew, ’to make you handle him so roughly?’ at which the man stared and said,—­

’Nay, what more needed there?  Matters are come to a pretty pass if free Englishmen, who are pleased to cheat and be cheated according to the fashion of this world, mayn’t do so neighbourly and kindly without some canting rogue starting up to control them.  We bade him hold his peace for a mad ass, but he would not.  So we judged his frenzy to be something too hot, and that a cold bath were good to cure it; and Squire, riding up and seeing the bustle we were in, offered us his own duck-pond for the ducking of our preacher.  Stay me no longer!  I shall lose the best sport;’ and Andrew snatching at him again to make him stay, he broke from him and ran as hard as he could after the crowd, that was now got some way from us.