"Yea, verily am I! a follower of the saintly Ludovick Muggleton, and of the saintlier John Reeve, of whom Ludovick is but the mouthpiece, even as Aaron was of Moses. They are the two witnesses of the Apocalypse. They are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks. To them and to their followers it is given to curse and to spare not, to prophesy against the peoples and kindred and nations and tongues whereon is set the seal of the beast. Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify against the people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists, Presbyterians and Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against princes, governors, and men in high places; against them that call themselves planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons and their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet. Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, even the breeding of salt-pits and a perpetual desolation!" "Your curses seem not to have availed, friend," said Landless. "Curses are apt to come home to roost. I should judge that yours have returned to you in the shape of branding-irons." The man raised a skeleton hand and stroked the red letter. "This," he said coolly, "was given me when I ran away the second time. The first time I was merely whipped. The third time I was shaven and this shackle put upon my leg." He raised his foot and pointed to an iron ring encircling the ankle. "The fourth time I was nailed by the ears to the pillory, whence come these pretty scars." Landless burst into grim laughter. "And after your fifth attempt, what then?" The man gave him a sidelong look. "I have not made my fifth attempt," he said quietly. They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then said Master Win-Grace Porringer:— "I was sent to the plantations, because, in defiance of the Act of Uniformity (cursed be it, and the authors thereof), I attended a meeting of the persecuted and broken remnant of the Lord’s people. What was your offense, friend, for I reckon that you come not here of your free will, being neither a rustic nor a fool?" "I came from Newgate," said Landless, after a pause. "I am a convict." The man’s hand stopped in the act of pulling off a shoot. He gave a slow upward look at the figure beside him, let his eyes rest upon the face, and looked slowly down again with a shake of the head. "Humph!" he said. "The society in Newgate must be improved since my time." They worked without speaking until they had nearly reached the end of the long double row, when said the Muggletonian:— "You are too young, I take it, to have seen service in the wars?" "I fought at Worcester." "Upon which side?" "The Commonwealth’s."