Yet Richard, as he looked up, awed and silent, from his stool by the table, felt as if his friend were still standing far above him on the summit of a high hill, with nothing but the heights of sky beyond his head and with the hills and valleys of the whole world stretching away below his feet.
'I see,' said Fox, and, as he spoke, to Richard too the narrow walls seemed to open and melt away into infinite space on every side: 'I see a people in white raiment, by a riverside—a great people—in white raiment, coming to the Lord.'
The flickering rushlight spluttered and went out. Through the low casement window the white mists could be seen, still rising from every bend and fold of the widespread valleys that lay around them, rising up, up, like an innumerable company of spirit-filled souls, while the moon shone down serenely over all.
II
It was a few days later, and Whitsun Eve. The same traveller who had climbed to the top of old Pendle Hill 'with much ado, it was so steep,' was coming down now on the far side of the Yorkshire dales.
'A lusty strong man of body' but 'of a grave look or countenance,' he 'travelled much on foot through rough and untrodden paths.' 'As he passed through Wensleydale he advised the people as he met or passed through them' 'to fear God,' 'which ... did much alarm the people, it being a time that many people were filled with zeal.'[3]
At sunset he passed through a village of flax-weavers whose settlements lay in the low flatts that bordered the rushing river Rawthey a mile or two outside of Sedbergh Town.
'I came through the Dales,' says George Fox in his Journal, 'and as I was passing along the way, I asked a man which was Richard Robinson's, and he asked me from whence I came, and I told him "From the Lord."'
This must have been a rather unexpected answer from a traveller on the high road. Can you not see the countryman's surprised face as he turns round and stares at the speaker, and wonders whatever he means?
'So when I came to Richard Robinson's I declared the Everlasting Truth to him, and yet a dark jealousy rose up in him after I had gone to bed, that I might be somebody that was come to rob his house, and he locked all his doors fast. And the next day I went to a separate meeting at Justice Benson's where the people generally was convinced, and this was the place that I had seen a people coming forth in white raiment; and a mighty meeting there was and is to this day near Sedbarr which I gathered in the name of Jesus.'