no one stirred.

"Why don't you get up, Tom?" asked one.

"I be lame."

"So be I."

"The gentleman can step over me, if he likes," said big Jan; a
proposition the impossibility whereof raised a horse-laugh.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, lads?" said the severe voice of
Willis, from above. The men rose sulkily; and Frank hastened on, as
ready to cry as ever he had been in his life. Poor fellow! he had been
labouring among these people for now twelve months, as no man had ever
laboured before, and he felt that he had not won the confidence of a
single human being,--not even of the old women, who took his teaching
for the sake of his charity, and who scented popery, all the while, in
words in which there was no popery, and in doctrines which were just
the same, on the whole, as those of the dissenting preacher, simply
because he would sprinkle among them certain words and phrases which
had become "suspect," as party badges. His church was all but empty;
the general excuse was, that it was a mile from the town: but Frank
knew that that was not the true reason; that all the parish had got it
into their heads that he had a leaning to popery; that he was going
over to Rome; that he was probably a Jesuit in disguise.

Now, be it always remembered, Frank Headley was a good man, in every
sense of the word. He had nothing, save the outside, in common with
those undesirable coxcombs, who have not been bred by the High Church