ins. Other hapless souls, condemned to
walk a bridge of spikes, carry burdens over a thin plank like a saw set
on edge. Above is a nimbus of clouds, and above the nimbus, the weighing
of souls. The archangel Michael balances the souls in great scales; a
fiend tries to make them kick the beam. On the other side is the
Harrowing of Hell. Hell is the mouth of a monstrous devil; Christ
advances with the cross and banner, and thrusts the wood of the cross
into the devil's mouth. The souls rise up delivered from purgatory;
above them, a flying angel floats with a scroll. Mr. J.G. Waller,
writing in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, explains most of the
painting, but has hardly a guess for the scroll. "The heavens depart, as
it were a scroll rolled together;" Mr. Waller does not mention the text
which to the layman seems obvious but the expert may have reasons
against it.

The punishment of the Bridge--the walking over a sharp edge, set with
spikes or narrow as a hair--is one of the oldest things of all the
religions. The Chinese had it, in the distant Eastern ages, and Mr.
Waller, in the _Collections_, prints verses which show it surviving in
Yorkshire in 1624. There was a Yorkshire tradition that a person after
death must pass over Whinney Moor; and at a funeral it was the custom
for a woman to come and chant verses over the corpse. These are an
extract:--

When thou from hence doest pass away,
Every night and awle,
To Whinney Moor thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Whinney Moor that thou mayest pass,
Every night and awle,
To Brig of dread thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
From Brig of dread, na brader than a thread,
Every night and awle,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

East of Chaldon is Caterham, west is Chipstead and south-west is
Merstham, each two miles or so away as the crow flies and something more
as the road runs, and each with a railway station. Caterham once was a
valley; Aubrey wrote of it: "In this parish are many pleasant little
vallies, stored with wild thyme, sweet marjoram, barnell, boscage, and
beeches." I do not know barnell, but the last twenty years have set
many houses among the boscage. They have built, too, two new churches,
one of them set very finely on a hill; the old church is disused, or
used, rather, only for a Sunday school. Upon Su