The village of Murston, which at one time skirted the road at some distance from Sittingbourne, and was in receipt of the town's leavings, is now quite undistinguishable by a stranger from the town itself, so greatly has the population grown of late years. It is quite uninteresting, save for the memory of the affray by which the rector, the Reverend Richard Tray, was ejected from his living in 1641. A stone let into the Rectory wall preserves the record of the affair:-- _Si Natvra negat facit Indignatio Versvm._ The Barne which stood where this now Stands was bvrnt down by the Rebel's hands in December 1659 This Barne which stands where tother stood By Richard Tray is now made good, in July 1662 All things yov bvrn, Or overtvrn, Bvt bvild vp novght: pray tell Is this the Fire of Zeale or Hell? Yet yov doe all By the Spirits call As yov pretend: bvt pray What Spirit is't? _A bad one_ I dare say. XXIX Five miles and a half down the road from Sittingbourne, the pilgrims who had prayed so devoutly at the shrine of Our Lady of the Buttress (and it is to be hoped had not forgotten the claims of Swanstree Hermitage) came to Ospringe, where they usually found a profuse hospitality waiting for them at the Maison Dieu. Not that there was any lack of religious houses on the way. Far from it, indeed. They had not proceeded much farther than a mile when they came in those times to the Hermitage of Bapchild, with the hermit standing on the doorstep, scratching himself with one hand, holding out a scollop shell for alms in the other, and conjuring them by the blessed Thomas and all the hierarchy of saints to spare something for his altar. The parish church of Bapchild, which was built in early Norman times, before any one dreamed of Canterbury becoming a place of pilgrimage, or the high-road crowded with a varied concourse of miserable sinners anxious to compound for their ill-deeds by visiting the scene of the martyrdom, is situated beside a lane at some distance from the road, and so was quite out of the track of that alms-giving crowd. It grieved the Vicar of Bapchild to see these free-handed folks going by, with never a mark or even a silver penny coming his way, and so he contrived to set up some sort of a cell and chapel with a few exceedingly dubious bones in it, supposed to be the reliques of saints; but probably grubbed up from his own churchyard. It did not matter much whose reliques they were called, for that was a credulous age, and so long as there were not two skulls of Saint Paulinus on view, or more than a gross of Saint Alphege's teeth to be seen at the numberless shrines between London and Canterbury, the pilgrims were not generally disposed to be critical. It was only when Saint Frideswyde appeared, from the osseous evidence of these shrines, to have as many arms as Vishnu, or when Saint Antholin appeared, from equally