The route of the three hundred was towards Stockport; but when they reached the bridge they found it occupied by the Yeomanry and a troop of the Life Guards. To attempt to force a passage was impossible; but numbers threw themselves into the river, and so crossed. The soldiers then withdrew into Stockport town, and the bridge was left open to the main body. When they got into the street on the other side the soldiers and police dashed at them, and arrested everybody whom they could catch. The Major was foremost in the crowd, endeavouring to preserve some sort of discipline, and one of the Yeomanry, suspecting him to be a leader, rode up to him, and, leaning from his horse, collared him. He was unarmed; but he was a powerful man, and wrenched himself free. The soldier drew his sword, and although Caillaud was close by, and attempted to parry the blow with a stick, the Major lay a dead man on the ground. The next moment, however, the soldier himself was dead—dead from a pistol-shot fired by Caillaud, who was instantly seized, handed over to a guard, and marched off with a score of others to Manchester jail. A remnant only of the Blanketeers escaped from Stockport, and a smaller remnant got to Macclesfield. There there was no shelter for them, and many of them lay in the streets all night. When the morning dawned only twenty went on into Staffordshire, and these shortly afterwards separated, and wandered back to Manchester. The sword of Gideon was, alas! not the sword of the Lord, and aching hearts in that bitter March weather felt that there was something worse than the cold to be borne at they struggled homewards. Others, amongst whom was our Methodist orator, were not discouraged. It is a poor religion which makes no provision for disaster, and even for apparently final failure. The test of faith is its power under defeat, and these silly God-fearing souls argued to themselves that their Master’s time was not their time; that perhaps they were being punished for their sins, and that when it pleased Him they would triumph. Essentially right they were, right in every particular, excepting, perhaps, that it was not for their own sins that this sore visitation came upon them. Visitation for sin it was certainly, but a visitation for the sins of others—such is the way of Providence, and has been ever since the world began, much to the amazement of many reflective persons. Thou hast laid on Him the iniquity of us all, and Jesus is crucified rather than the Scribes and Pharisees! Yet could we really wish it otherwise? Would it have been better in the end that Caiaphas and the elders should have been nailed upon Calvary, and Jesus die at a good old age, crowned with honour? It was not yet God’s time in 1817, but God’s time was helped forward, as it generally is, by this anticipation of it. It is a commonplace that a premature outbreak puts back the hands of the clock and is a blunder. Nine times out of ten this