_'John Camm, he was my father according to the flesh, so was he also a spiritual father and instructor of me in the way of Truth and Righteousness ... for his tender care was great for the education of me and the rest of his children and family in the Nurture and Fear of the Lord.'--THOMAS CAMM._ _'Death cannot separate us, for in the never-failing love of God there is union for evermore.'--J. CAMM._ VIII. A WONDERFUL FORTNIGHT I The annual Fair on Whitsun Wednesday is the gayest time of the whole year at Sedbergh. For a few hours the solid grey town under the green fells gives itself up to gaiety and merriment. The gentry of the neighbourhood as well as the country folk for miles around come flocking to the annual hiring of farm lads and lasses, which is the main business of the Fair. Thoughts of profit and the chance of making a good bargain fill the heads of the older generation. But the youths and maidens come, eager-eyed, looking for romance. At the Fair they seek to guess what Fate may hold in store for them during the long months of labour that will follow hard on their few hours of jollification. 'All manner of finery was to be had' at the Fair; 'there were morris and rapier dances, wrestling and love-making going on,' and plenty of hard drinking too. 'The Fair at Sedbergh' was the emphatic destination of many a prosperous farmer and labourer on a Whitsun Wednesday morning; but it was 'Sebba Fair' he cursed thickly under his breath as he reeled home at night. In truth seventeenth-century Sedbergh was a busy place, not only in Fair week, but at other times too, with its stately old church and its grammar school; to say nothing of the fact that, in these days of Oliver's Protectorate, it boasted no less than forty-eight different religious sects among its few hundred inhabitants. Only the sad-eyed Seekers, coming down in little groups from their scattered hamlets, exchanged sorrowful greetings as they met one another amid all the riot and hubbub of the Fair; for they had tried the forty-eight sects in turn for the nourishment their souls needed, and had tried them all in vain. Until this miraculous Whitsuntide of June 1652, when, suddenly, in a moment, everything was changed.