An Old Colonial Virginia preacher

"L. L. Gwaltney was a noted Virginia editor. He once told about an experience he heard his grandfather relate. When his grandfather was a small boy, he accompanied his father to the funeral service of an old Colonial Virginia preacher. As he and his father looked at the body of the preacher in the casket, the boy noticed that large scars covered the preacher’s hands. Later the boy asked his father about the scars. His father told him that this Baptist minister had been arrested for preaching in violation of the established church. Because he continued to preach from the jail, a high fence was built in front of the jail window so the people who gathered there could not see him. The people continued to gather to hear him preach. When he preached, he would stick his hands through the bars of the jail to gesture. When he extended his arms through the bars, the guards on duty would cut his hands with sharp knives. He bore those scars to his grave." -- From Chapter 6 of William Powell Tuck's Our Baptist Tradition