“Yea--yea,” said Master Chester, “it is even so, I know; but truly painful it is, brother, to think that we shall some time forget our pain--thou knowest? She is a good child--a blessed child, as ever made mortal household glad; and I must carry sadness to her. Nevertheless, surely it is well; and it had not been well, He had not sent it.” An hour after, they were riding forth from the city, which, for a second time, had rejected them, pursued by the rigorous cruelty of that famed “Five-Mile Act,” which Charles and his counselors had devised in the retreat of their cowardice at Oxford, while those very men, whom they sentenced to perpetual banishment, wandering, and poverty, were laboring for the people stricken by God’s judgment. Edith, protected from the cold, as well as her scanty wardrobe would allow, rode behind her father. Master Chester was beside them. As they reached the high road to the north, they encountered Master Franklin. “Brother Franklin,” said Master Chester, “what is thy destination, that thou art still tarrying here?” “Good brother, I am a poor man, and alone,” was the answer; “and, in sooth, I see little to choose between a prison, and some distant village, where I could hide me, and earn a morsel of bread; so I will tarry truly, and will stay my preaching for no law. If they do lay violent hands on me, be it so; if I may not preach, I may suffer; for I have no daughter, Master Field--no household, good brother Chester--and surely it is a thing lawful to be resisted, that an Englishman may not speak God’s truth.” So the stubborn Saxon man remained, in various places stoutly resisting the enacted injustice, and carrying his Master’s message without fear; a persevering, plain, laborious spirit, whose tenacious and obstinate strength had something noble in it--so little show as it made--so little transfusion as it had of the loftier light of genius. The brave and honest common stock, of whom, if there were many, it would be blessed for this land. And leaving London, the terror of God’s judgment removed, rushing headlong again into its ancient sins, the other Puritans went forth houseless, with only poverty and pain before them, to seek shelter and daily bread. Of all the benefactors of the stricken city, the most bold and untiring, they, and no other, were cast out at its restoration, in hardship, in sorrow, and in reproach, persecuted for their Master’s sake. While among the many graves of yonder city churchyard, with those around him to whom he had ministered in deadly peril, and for whom he had spent his life, the preacher Vincent, lay quiet and at rest.