Another painting sets out a commoner story, the allegory of the Three Living and the Three Dead. Three kings ride out hunting in the forest, and are met by three ghastly spectres, who lecture them on the vanity of this world's pomps and pleasures. I should think this used to be a favourite. It must have been vastly comforting to the poor, and pretty easy, too, for the parson. Anybody could make a sermon on the sufferings in store for kings and other rich people, and the way they go out hunting and shooting and not caring for anybody, and then the spectres come at them and they see how empty life is. Even to-day those ruddled drawings can set a spell. Stare at them, and the little church calls back its preacher and his flock; there, in the pulpit, he stood, gesturing at the dragon and St. Margaret; here, below him, sat the quiet-hearted countrymen, wondering in the solemn Sunday sunshine; here, perhaps, a child, hearing the story for the first time. St. Margaret must have been more difficult than the Kings. She begins well enough, and she goes on well--the village maidens would doubt whether they would have the strength to refuse an Olibrius. Then the deliverance from the devil would do admirably; the bumpkins would swallow that as easily as the devil swallowed St. Margaret. But how to go on? How to explain the failure of Providence afterwards? The preacher must have slurred that, and got on quickly to the wings of the dove. Two great Surrey families belong to Charlwood. One is the line of Sander, or Saunder, settled at Charlwood as early as Edward II, and still surviving, in name at all events, in the neighbourhood. It was Richard Saunder who placed in the church the delicate fifteenth-century oak screen, the most beautiful in the county; but a more famous member of the family was Nicholas Saunder, Regius Professor and Jesuit Divine, over whose writings many good churchmen quarrelled. The other family are the Jordans of Gatwick, almost as old as the Saunders, and like them surviving in cottage life to-day. [Illustration: _Godstone._] CHAPTER XXXVIII GODSTONE AND BLETCHINGLEY The White Hart at Godstone.--Cobbett's violets.--Bletchingley.--Beagles and Foxhounds.--Dr. Nathaniel Harris.--Begging the Love of Neighbours.--A gratious woman.--Swift and a gentle prelate.--Bletchingley manor.--The Master of the Revels.--An English gentleman's Armour.--How to be buried.--Posing for a tombstone.--Nutfield.--Fuller's earth and its new uses.