urs in most that made
us a community of drunkards and forswearers both lewd and abominable.
For in that village a depravity that was like madness had come to possess
the heads of the people, and no man durst take his stand on honesty or
even common decency, for fear he should be set upon by his comrades and
drummed out of his government on a pint pot. Yet for myself I will say
was one only redeeming quality, and that was the pure love I bore to my
solitary orphaned child, the little Margery.

Now, our Vicar--a patient and God-fearing man, for all his predial tithes
were impropriated by his lord, that was an absentee and a sheriff in
London--did little to stem that current of lewdness that had set in
strong with the Restoration. And this was from no lack of virtue in
himself, but rather from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and an
order of mind that, yet being no order, is made the sport of any
sophister with a wit for paragram. Thus it always is that mere example is
of little avail without precept,--of which, however, it is an important
condition,--and that the successful directors of men be not those who go
to the van and lead, unconscious of the gibes and mockery in their rear,
but such rather as drive the mob before them with a smiting hand and no
infirmity of purpose. So, if a certain affection for our pastor dwelt in
our hearts, no title of respect was there to leaven it and justify his
high office before Him that consigned the trust; and ever deeper and
deeper we sank in the slough of corruption, until was brought about this
pass--that naught but some scourging despotism of the Church should
acquit us of the fate of Sodom. That such, at the eleventh hour, was
vouchsafed us of God's mercy, it is my purpose to show; and, doubtless,
this offering of a loop-hole was to account by reason of the devil's
having debarked his reserves, as it were, in our port; and so quartering
upon us a soldiery that we were, at no invitation of our own, to
maintain, stood us a certain extenuation.

It was late in the order of things before in our village so much as a
rumour of the plague reached us. Newspapers were not in those days, and
reports, being by word of mouth, travelled slowly, and were often spent
bullets by the time they fell amongst us. Yet, by May, some gossip there
was of the distemper having gotten a hold in certain quarters of London
and increasing, and this alarmed our people, though it made no abatement
of thei