to tear him to pieces should he venture to repair to the hallowed spot by a particular path. Greatly daring, he went; and discovering, of course, no fiend at the tree, he exclaimed, "Ah, cowardly Devil! you threatened to tear me in pieces, and now you do not dare to show your face." Instead, however, of finding Satan at the rendezvous, his eye lighted on what was much to be preferred; viz., a massive gold ring, for which, mysteriously enough, there was no claimant. But the sequel to the story is the best. The old man continued annually to visit the spot for devotional exercises, till at last a wheat-field occupied the site of the wood. He then knelt down among the wheat to pray, but had hardly commenced when he was sternly reminded that his sacred grove had not been cut down for nothing, and that he must seek the Lord elsewhere. "Maister," cried a harsh voice on the other side of an adjoining hedge, "thayre be a creazy man a-saying his prayers down in the wheat over thajre!"
John Spurgeon, the son of this venerable grove-worshipper, and father of the subject of this sketch, was the second of a family of ten. For many years he was engaged in business in Colchester; but, like so many of his family, he eventually drifted into the ministry, doing duty successively at Tollesbury; Cranbrook, Kent; Fetter Lane, Holborn; and at Islington. When a mere child, his son, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, became an inmate of his grandfather's house at Stambourne, and at once came under the most pietistic influences. When ten years of age (see "Sword and Trowel"), a man of God, the Rev. Richard Knill, made him the subject of a prophecy, which of course came to pass:—
"Calling the family together, he took me on his knee,
