Richard Osmund and his white horse approached Great Meadow. The year was at autumn, the year 1654. A considerable village, Great Meadow spread over the ancient meadow and a short way up the hill. Meadow and hill had for a border a still, complacent river. The hill was crested by an old wood, and along the roadside stood huge, bronzing trees. A mile from town a stream turned a mill wheel. From the tall stone mill might be seen clustering houses with small bright dooryards, and the village green and an ancient church and churchyard.

Richard Osmund rode slowly, a steadfast man in a plain dress of brown. Dress and his short-cut hair, and his uncocked hat, general demeanour as well, marked him for some shade of inhabitant of the Puritan and Parliamentary hemisphere. But within this general part of the globe it was hard to class him. He did not look mere Church Reform, nor yet Presbyterian, nor precisely Independent, not yet Anabaptist nor Leveller. Certainly he must be a dissident of some sort, but of what sort?

He possessed strength and erectness, with a clean accuracy of bodily movement. Perhaps he had been a soldier—Ironside. But even thus he was not wholly classed. There seemed to shine from him a kind of wisdom; he looked a thinker. Perhaps he was a member of that Parliament sitting in London Town, busy with English destinies. Yet even in this time of the Commonwealth, there should{390} be about him some little pomp and circumstance to mark him so important. There was not. So perhaps he was not important. He seemed about thirty.

It was a still autumn morning, of a vision-like lift and clearness. The white horse went at a walk, Richard Osmund thinking as he rode. He came by the stone mill. The mill stream gave forth a crystal sound, the water flashed over the wheel. A couple of men, two or three boys, busied themselves before the great door.

“Good-day, friends!” said Richard Osmund, passing.

“Good-day,” answered the men; then, straightening themselves from the grain sacks, looked at horse and rider more closely. Said the miller, “That one, too, rides a white horse!”

Osmund had passed the door. The miller’s helper called after him, “Be Richard Osmund your name?”

The rider turned his head. “Yes, friend! It is my name.”

The miller and the miller’s helper broke into laughter—not kindly laughter. “Osmund on his white horse!” The laughter had in it a jeer, anger increased in it. The miller was a choleric man. He doubled his fists, he shouted to Osmund: “Throw you in the race! Come here, and I’ll throw you in the race!”

The man to whom he cried regarded him and the mill wheel and the mill race with a certain patient whimsicalness. “Flow race—turn wheel—fight with your sins, miller! Not with me who bring them to your mind!”

He rode on, going with the same deliberateness as before. The road bending, the mill was hidden. He was going over a way chequered with light and shade. Overhead rose a great noise of birds. The road mounting slightly; he saw, at a little distance, the village full before him like the{391} device upon a shield. Richard Osmund upon his white horse.

The horse had been his father’s. It was old, but strong yet. Richard Osmund had money, just enough to loosen the bonds of farm and of desk and to set him free to go through England from town to town and village to village, to clothe him as he was clothed, to give him plain lodging and plain food. He had not money for another horse, did he wish to change. Loving his old white friend, the thing had not before occurred to him. But it was true that he was sooner known for the horse that he rode. Where there grew hostility the bitter fruit fell oftener upon his head.... He might take White Faithful back to the farm, and henceforth walk. That was in his mind as he rode.... Halfway between the mill and the town he saw running through the fields the boys who had hung about the mill door. They were making for Great Meadow, and would be there as soon or sooner than he. “Ho! Coming into town, Richard Osmund—!”

White Faithful and Osmund plodded on.

He thought that he must have been in Great Meadow as a child, his father and mother coming this way from the north. And after Marston Moor he had ridden through the place, a young soldier in a troop of Ironsides. He had remembered the mill, and now he thought that over all the landscape and the village like the boss of the shield there hung a sense of familiarity. He often had this brooding sense. “Nor is this either strange to me!”

He approached the edge of the village. About him, among trees, stood some poor cottages. He spoke to an old man leaning upon a gate. “I want a lodging for two days or more. There is a tavern here{392}—”

“Aye. Once ’twas the King’s Own, but now ’tis the Green Wreath.”

“Tavern charges are too great. But I can pay fairly for myself and my horse.”

“Over there, among the willows—Diccon the thatcher may take you.”

“Over there” showed a field away from the road. A lane led to it. Down this turned Osmund, riding beneath ancient trees. He crossed a stream, and came to a thatched house, long and low, willow-shaded, and open-doored. Diccon the thatcher was building a shed. Yes, he had a room to hire and a stable for a horse. So much it was.

Osmund, dismounted, drew from pocket the sum named.

“The most pay when they go,” said the thatcher.

“I know. But accidents happen. Best take it now, friend!”

“An you will, I will,” said the thatcher and took the money. He looked the other over. “The gentry do not often come here. They go to the Green Wreath.”

“I am not gentry. Perhaps,” said Osmund, “it is right to tell you that I am not popular where I go.”

The thatcher gazed still, then he spoke and he seemed to quote some saying that he had heard. “‘A simple, proper-looking man riding a white horse.’—Is your name Osmund?”

“Yes. Richard Osmund.”

The thatcher, who was a slow, deep man, studied the situation. “If strange doctrines killed men I reckon that England would be a desert to-day!... Now, George Fox. I was at Reading, and I heard him witnessing before what he called the steeple-house. When he was done they beat and stoned him and took him away to gaol.... But{393} I didn’t taste poison in his words. I thought there was some honey in them.”

“So there is.—I will put White Faithful in the stable then.”

“It is market day in Great Meadow. There will be a many about.”

“It happens sometimes to me as it does to George Fox. If it happens so in Great Meadow, keep White Faithful, until you hear from me. If you hear no more, keep him and use him, treating him well.”

They moved together toward the stable and the house. “Great Meadow,” said the thatcher, “is hard on new doctrines until somehow it drinks them down—and then it thinks the spring was always on its land! I’ve seen Great Meadow Bishop and King—and I’ve seen it Presbytery and Parliament—and now it’s Independent and Oliver and the new Commons. But it always cries ‘Poison!’ at first.... Keep your mouth shut till you see which way the creature’ll jump! That always seemed wisdom to me until I heard George Fox.”

“And then?”

“I’m not so sure,” said the thatcher. “Of course if you’re marching, and the thirst and heat are bad, and some one knows of a spring of water he ought to tell.... But your doctrine, now, isn’t religious.”

“Isn’t it?” asked Osmund. “I wonder.... I think that it is religious.”

“Scorn and laughter are hard things to bear,” said the thatcher. “How did you strike out what you did?”

“The fire was in the flint for who had eyes to see,” said Osmund. “Also I was born of a woman.”

Within the house Margery the thatcher’s wife put bread{394} and ale upon a table. Osmund sat down and ate and drank. When he had done this he took a book from his pocket and began to read. That was for rest after deep pondering, and to steady nerve and brain before he should rise and walk forth, deep into Great Meadow. A small, latticed window gave upon a small garden and a climbing hill. In the garden were sprinkled, as by a giant’s hand, clumps of red and gold and blue, gillyflower and larkspur and marigold. A woman, passing the window, looked for a moment into the room, then presently entered at the door. She crossed to a stair and mounting this disappeared. Osmund looked up from his book. She was a young woman, of a darkness mixed with rose. Almost immediately she was in the room again, upon her head the wide straw hat of the country women. She crossed to the door, vanished into the world without.

Osmund, falling to his book again, read a little farther in its pages, then marked the place and shut the volume. He sat on in the clean, still room, elbows resting upon the table, his forehead in his hands. He sat very quiet, collecting the inner forces. At last he rose, and left the room and the cottage. He found the thatcher yet busy with the shed. “Are you going now into Great Meadow? That is my cousin going ahead of you there. Wait till she is gone. I said naught to her about you.”

Osmund leaned against the shed and looked at a bird soaring above the stream and the trees. The thatcher spoke on. “As I said, there’ll be a many about in the town to-day—well-off and poor and old and young. And market days aren’t always the most peaceable! You know your own business best, but Great Meadow’ll be a quieter place to-morrow.{395}”

“But not so many people together. If you’ve a message,” said Osmund, “that you want to give to the whole country—”

The thatcher took hold of a beam to lift it into place. Osmund helping him, together they raised and set it, then stood back to breathe. “Well, yours is the strangest message!” said the thatcher. “I’m coming into town myself after a little. I’ve heard George Fox. As I look at it, a man can afford to hear more than ordinarily he does hear.”

“I think that he can,” said Osmund.

The woman had disappeared from the lane going to Great Meadow. Richard Osmund, crossing the stream, took the same narrow way, bronzed by autumn, with the birds flying up from the hedges, up and afar into the deep, blue heaven.

Short was the distance into Great Meadow. It seemed that every one was out of doors; he heard the market clack and hum. Persons passed him and he passed persons, men and women and children. Some did not notice him; others spoke or not as the mood was in them. It was not until he had come in sight of the market stalls and the village green that any recognized him. Then came tilt against him one of the boys who had been at the mill and had run through the fields. The boy looked, then turned and ran crying to a knot of young men at a corner: “Here he is now! Here he is now!” Richard Osmund passed by to loud laughter and hard words.

The Green Wreath had about it numbers of villagers and country folk. Drovers and farmers were in town. The tavern, the church, the market booths all gave upon the green. The day was at noon, the sun strong, the air full of sound. In the circle of Great Meadow were a thou{396}sand people and more.... All over England stood such hives of people.... To place within these hives an idea new to them, to leave it there to live and work, or to seem to die, smothered and trodden underfoot, to seem to die and yet to work on.... Ways to place ideas. The writing way, the book way, was one. And Richard Osmund’s book might serve the idea, and he hoped as much from it. To speak out in England to-day was the other way that he could see, and, seeing, took.

Broad, rounded steps led from the green to the churchyard gate. Here was goodly space for standing, and many a speaker to Great Meadow had stood here. Now Osmund stood. “Folk of Great Meadow—”

Buyers and sellers, men and women, left the market. The men left the Green Wreath. There came together a mob, increasing from every side. In part it was curious and wished to hear, in part it was angry and wished but to loose its own passion. Here and there in the mass might stand a forward-looking soul, interested rather than curious, not inclined to mere fury against the new. But these were few set over against the many.

Osmund stood, a resolute man, striving to cause an inner light to shine outward. He looked at the throng pressing around, close to the steps. He saw that it made a black and heavy cloud that might turn to a storm that should beat him down. By now he could well gauge these crowds that would listen so long as it pleased them to do so, and then would lift the arm of a phrenetic. Yet always, even in the midst of the darkest cloud, he could see, like stars in narrow rifts, listening faces, kindred eyes. But this was a heavy cloud and would surely break in storm.

He opened his lips. “I have a call to speak to the people{397} of England!—England, England, thou hast heard many calling to thee, and sometimes thou harkenest, and sometimes thou turnest upon thy side. ‘Let me alone! A little more slumber and a little more sleep!’ And sometimes thou stainest thyself purple with the blood of those who cry!”

In the crowd was a score of mere barbarians. These began at once to shout against him. “Richard Osmund! Pull him down! Have away with him!” Others withstood these. “Wait till he speaks! We want to hear—” The crowd worked and seethed. The sun beat down upon flushed faces.

“Great Meadow, hearken! What is our English word to-day? Liberty! Then I speak to you of Liberty. What have we done? We have said to the Bishops, ‘God in us the ruler in his own matters—not you!’ We have said to the House of Lords, ‘You have thought that you were born to rule over us—but you were not!’ We have said to the King, ‘Only in the divine is there divine right!’ And the Bishops rule no more, nor the Lords, and the King has suffered death. Now is the New Commons sitting in London!”

His words made way against all difficulties. “Aye, aye!” cried the crowd, arrested. “We in England rule ourselves! We and Oliver rule ourselves!”

Osmund laughed, standing on the churchyard steps. His laughter was not bitter, but clear and large. “So we say. ‘Lo,’ we say, ‘England is free!’ Freer than we were—that is sooth! But not free. No more so than is the prisoner who has broken one ward when there are twenty yet to break. Yet is that prisoner freer by just that broken ward, and stronger to work on by the new hope that is in him! Let him take courage and break ward after ward!{398}”

“What ward, now? Now, what ward? Now shall we have Osmund’s doctrine!”

“Break ward after ward! Said Christ Jesus, ‘Put not new wine into old bottles, nor new cloth upon the old garment.’—O English folk, let us deepen and widen and heighten freedom until there stands the new vessel for the new wine, and for the patched the whole, fair, shining garment! Nowhere yet—no, not by many a ward—full freedom, full escape! Not in England, not upon earth. Freedom in part—light in part! Your task and mine never to rest until the whole is come and the part melts within it!”

“Osmund’s doctrine! ‘Let women rule, too!’ He always begins something like this, and then he ends, ‘Let women rule, too!’”

“Be sure he leads a lewd life!”

The more violent sort broke forth again. “Pull him down! Have away with him! In Warwick it was gaol for him, and in Coventry cart tail and pillory! Heinousness! Heinousness and blasphemy!” Clamour arose and a movement from within the throng toward the steps and Osmund upon them. Then appeared the Great Meadow constable and his men. “Orde............