the coming contest, which, we felt sure, would be won by our side,
we pressed our tired nags over the brook towards the steep hill which
separates Charmouth from Lyme.

It was early morning, about five o'clock, when we came to Charmouth;
but the little town was as busy as though it were noon on fair-day. The
street was crowded. People were coming in from all the countryside. A
man was haranguing the crowd from a horseless waggon drawn up at an inn.
The horses had no doubt been pressed into Monmouth's service some hours
before. I should think that there must have been three hundred people
listening to the orator. Men, already half drunk, with green boughs in
their hats, were marching about the town in uneven companies, armed
with clubs torn from the hedges. Weeping women followed them, trying to
persuade their sons or husbands to come home. Other men were bringing
out horses from private stables. People were singing. One man, leaning
out of a window, kept on firing his pistol as fast as he could load.
Waving men cheered from the hill above. The men in the town cheered
back. There was a great deal of noisy joking everywhere. They cheered us
as we rode through them, telling us that Monmouth had arms for all. One
poor woman begged Mr. Blick to tell her man to come home, as without him
the children would all starve. The crowd groaned at her; but Mr. Blick
stopped them, calling the husband, who was in a sad state of drunken
vainglory, to leave the ranks in which he tried to march. "We don't want
fathers of families," he cried. "We want these tight young bachelors.
They're the boys." Indeed, the tight young bachelors felt that this was
the case, so the woman got her man again; lucky she was to get him. As
far as I could judge, the crowd imagined us to be great officers; at
any rate our coming drew away the listeners from the waggon. They came
flocking to our heels as though we were the Duke himself. A drummer beat
up a quickstep; the crowd surged forward. We marched across the fields
to Lyme, five hundred strong. One of the men, plucking a sprig of
hawthorn from the hedge, asked me to wear it in my hat as the Duke's
badge, which I did. He called me "Captain." "Captain," he said. "We had
a brush with them already, this morning, along the road here. Two on 'em
were killed. They didn't stay for no more." So fighting had begun then,
the civil war had taken its first fruits of life. There could be no more
shillyshallying; we had put our hands to a big business. In spite of
the noise of the march, my spirits were rather dashed by the thought
of those two men, lying dead somewhere on the road behind us, killed by
their own countrymen.

We are said to be a sober people; but none of those who saw Lyme that
morning would have had much opinion of our sobriety. Charmouth had been
disorderly; Lyme was uproarious. Outside the town, in one of the fields
above the church, we were stopped by a guard of men who all wore white
scarves on their arms, as well as green sprays in their hats. They
stopped us, apparently, because their captain wished to exercise them
in military customs. They were evidently raw to the use of arms. They
handled their muskets like spades. "Be you for Monmouth, masters?" they
asked us, grinning. When we said that we were, this very unmilitary
guard told us to pass on. "Her've got arms for all," they said. "The
word be 'Fear nothing but God.'" Some of them joked with friends among
our party. They waved their muskets to us.

CHAPTER XVI. THE LANDING

Inside the town, there was great confusion. Riotous men were foraging,
that is, plundering from private houses, pretending that they did so at
the Duke's orders. The streets were full of people, nearly all of them
men, the green boughs in their hats. On the beach two long lines of
men with green scarves on their arms were being drilled by an officer.
Horses were picketed in a long line up the main street; they were
mostly very poor cart-stock, ill-provided, as I learned afterwards,
with harness. Men were bringing hay to them from whatever haystack was
nearest. From time to time, there came a loud booming of guns, above
the ringing of the church bells. Three ships in the bay, one of them
La Reina, were firing salutes as they hoisted their colours. It was all
like a very noisy fair or coronation day. It had little appearance of an
armed invasion. We found the Duke busy with Mr. Jermyn enlisting men in
a field above the town.

"That's not Mr. Jermyn. That's Lord Grey," Mr. Blick said, on hearing me
exclaim. "Mr. Jermyn's only the name he goes by. He's my Lord now, you
must remember."

Just then the Duke caught sight of us riding up. He took us for local
gentry, coming in to volunteer. He came smiling to welcome us. It must
have been a shrewd disappointment to him to find that we were not what
he thought. All his hopes were in the gentry, poor man. By the time we
were on our feet with our hats off he had turned his back upon us
as though to speak to Lord Grey, but really, I believe, to hide his
chagrin. When he turned to us again both of them welcomed us, saying
that there was work enough for all, in enlisting men, making out
billets, etc. So without more ado we gave our horses to the ostlers at
an inn. Mr. Blick at once began to blarney the standers-by into joining,
while I, sitting at a little table, in the open air, wrote out copies of
a letter addressed to the local gentry. My copies were carried from Lyme
by messengers that afternoon but, alas for my master, they did not bring
many gentry to us.

Now while I was writing at the table, under the great flapping standard,
with the Duke, in his purple coat, walking about in front of me, I had a
pretty full view of the crowd which ringed us in. We were circled about
by a crowd of gaping admirers; from whom, every minute, Mr. Blick, or
the Duke, or Lord Grey, would select a sheepish grinning man to serve
under our colours. Among the crowd I noticed a little old lame man with
a long white beard. He was a puppet-man, who was making the people laugh
by dancing his puppets almost under the Duke's nose. As he jerked the
puppet-strings, he played continually on his pan-pipes the ribald tune
of "Hey, boys, up go we," then very popular. The Duke spoke to him once;
but he did not answer, only bowed very low, with his hat off, which made
the people think him an idiot or a jester. They laughed heartily at him.
After a bit, it occurred to me that this old puppet-shaker always crept
into the ring (with his hat off to receive alms) whenever the Duke spoke
aside to Lord Grey, or to some other officer. I watched him narrowly to
make sure, because something in his manner made me suspect that he was
trying to catch what our leaders said to each other. I tried to recall
where I had seen the old man; for I had seen him before. He had been at
Exeter on the day we set out for Sidmouth, so much I remembered clearly;
but looking at him carefully, with my head full of memories of faces,
it seemed to me that he had been at Dorchester also. Surely an old man,
lame in the left leg like this man, had gone down a narrow lane in
front of me in Dorchester. I had not thought of it in Dorchester; but I
thought of it now, with a feeling that it was strange to meet again thus
in Lyme. I took good stock of the man, wondering if he were a spy.
He was a dirty old man enough. His dirty fingers poked through ragged
mittens. His cheeks were all swathed up in a woollen comforter. I made
the mistake of looking at him so hard that I made him look at me. Seeing
that I was staring at him, with a face full of suspicion, he walked
boldly up to me, holding out his hat for my charity. We stared at
each other, while he blew a blast on his pan-pipes, at which everybody
laughed.

"Come, come, boy," said Lord Grey to me, "we want those letters done.
Never mind about the puppets. Here, old man" (giving him a penny), "you
take yourself off now. Or are you going to enlist?"

The people laughed again at this, while the old man, after a flourish of
his hat to me, piped up lively quickstep, called "Jockeys to the Fair."

He disappeared after this. I did not see him again until our troubles
began, later in the morning. I was finishing off the last of my letters,
when some of our scouts rode in to make a grave report to the Duke. They
had ridden in pretty hard, their horses were lathered all over. They
themselves were in an internal lather; for they had just had their first
sight of war. They had come into touch (so they declared) with the
whole of Albemarle's militia, marching out to attack them. On being
questioned, it turned out that they had heard this from an excited
labourer who had run to them with the news, as they stood guard in
a roadside field a few miles out of Lyme. They themselves had seen
nothing, but the news seemed so probable that the Duke acted on it. He
sent me off at once with a message to a clever, handsome gentleman who
was in charge of the cavalry in the street. It was in giving the message
that I saw the old man again. He was them limping up the street on the
Sidmouth road, going fast, in spite of his lameness. I gave my message
to the captain, who commanded his trumpeter to call to arms. The
trumpeter blew nobly; but the sight of the confusion afterwards showed
me how little raw troops can be trusted. There was a hasty scramble for
horses rather than a setting forth. Some men quarreled over weapons;
others wrestled with harness; others ran about wildly, asking what was
happening, was it to be a battle, what did blowing on the trumpet mean?
Some few, thinking the worst, got wisdom in those few moments. They took
horses from the ranks, but instead of forming up with the regiments,
they galloped off home, having had enough of soldiering at the first
order. The foot behaved rather better, knowing, perhaps, that if they
fought they would be behind hedges, in some sort of shelter. Even so,
they seemed a raw lot of clumsy bumpkins as they marched up. Many of
them were in ploughmen's smock-frocks; hardly any of them had any
sense of handling their guns. They had drums with them, which beat up
a quickstep, giving each man of them a high sense of his importance,
especially if he had been drinking. People in the roadway cheered them,
until they heard that there was to be a battle. Those who were coming in
to join us found it a reason for hesitation.

After a lot of confusion, the army drew out of Lyme along the Sidmouth
road, followed by a host of sightseers. Some of the best mounted rode
on ahead at a trot, under the handsome man, Mr. Fletcher, who was their
captain. I followed on with the foot-soldiers, who marched extremely
slowly. They halted at their own discretion; nor did they seem to
understand that orders given were to be obeyed. What they liked, poor
fellows, was to see the women admiring them. The march up the hill
out of Lyme was a long exhibition of vanity, the women waving their
handkerchiefs, the men putting on all sorts of airs, jetting like
gamecocks. When we got up to the top of the hill, I saw the old lame
puppet-man, sitting on the edge of the wild, unenclosed, gorse-covered
common-land which stretches away towards the town of Axminster. He was
watching us with deep interest. Our men were spreading out into line
upon this common. The horse was ranging on, bobbing about, far ahead.
The foot were looking about eagerly as they got out of the ranks in
which they had marched; but they could see no trace of any enemy.
I caught sight of the Duke four hundred yards away, a little figure
sitting alone on his horse, in front of half a dozen others. They were
all scanning the country, all the way round. Presently I called out that
I saw the enemy. Half a dozen cavalry were riding up a combe far off.
But they were our own men, not the militia. They were some of our scouts
riding off as "feelers" to spy out Albemarle's position. All the time
that we were up there on the hill, the little old man portered about
among the men, now listening to what they had to say, now asking the
soldiers to look at his pretty puppets. When the returning scouts
brought word that no troops were near us, so that we were free to march
back again, he was still there, packing up his puppets in tarred canvas,
as though about to march off to the next market-town. We marched past
him, as he sat in the heather. I passed quite close to him, staring at
him hard, for to tell the truth he was on my mind. I was suspicious of
him. He took off his hat to me, with a smile; but he did not speak. Then
my troops swung round, down the hill, leaving him alone there, watching
the men pass.

Other things put him out of my mind during the afternoon. I was kept
busy writing orders to scouts; for we were sending out scouts in every
direction, partly to protect us from surprise, partly to direct new
recruits to our headquarters. Mr. Blick, who knew the ground dictated
the letters, helped by Mr. Fletcher, who studied a big map with great
attention; I was writing all that afternoon. Lyme grew noisier during
the day, as the recruits became more drunk. Many steady men turned away
from us when they saw our disorder. I myself had been brought up to
abhor drunkenness. I found the state of drunken uproar very terrible. I
feared that such an army would never achieve any great deed. I thought
that such sin would be punished. Our soldiers were not behaving like
knights sworn to a good cause; but like boors at a fair. That day we
lost our only good officer, Mr. Fletcher.

I have spoken of this gentleman. He was in command of the horse under
Lord Grey. He was a much better soldier than my Lord; a better officer,
too; a better man. Now in the day's confusion, with everything topsy
turvy, the Duke's messenger, "Old Dare," rode into Lyme from Taunton,
where he had galloped the day before to spread the news of our arrival.
This Dare was a quick-tempered, not very clever, popular man with a
great deal of influence in the countryside. On his way back to us from
Taunton, someone lent, or gave, him a very fine horse. It may have been
meant as a gift to the Duke; I do not know. Anyhow Old Dare rode in on
this horse with letters from Taunton, which he handed to Mr. Fletcher to
give to the Duke. Fletcher, our cavalry commander, had as yet no horse;
so seeing the splendid charger on which Old Dare rode, he ordered Old
Dare to give it up to him. He was the real commander of the army, with
a military right, if no real right, to take what horse he liked from
any subordinate officer. But Old Dare, like so many of our men, had no
knowledge of what soldier's discipline meant. He saw, in Fletcher, a
gentleman with whom he had lived as an equal for the last fortnight. He
was not going to give up his horse like that; not he. Fletcher (speaking
sharply) told him to obey without further words, at which Dare in a
sudden flush of temper struck him with his riding switch. Fletcher
was not a patient man. He could not let an act of gross mutiny pass
unpunished, nor would he suffer an insult. He shot Dare dead upon
the spot, in full view of some hundreds of us. It was all done in an
instant. There was Dare lying dead, never to stir again. There was
Fletcher, our only soldier, with a smoking pistol in his hand, thinking
that he had taught the army a lesson in obedience. There was the
army all about him, flocking round in a swarm, not looking at it as a
military punishment but as a savage murder, for which he deserved to be
hanged. Then the Duke hastened up to make things quiet, before the army
avenged their friend. He drew Fletcher aside, though the people murmured
at him for speaking to a murderer. He was unnerved by Fletcher's act. He
had no great vitality. Sudden crises such as this unnerved him, by
using up his forces. A crisis of this kind (a small thing in a great
rebellion) was often enough to keep his brain from considering other,
more important, more burning questions concerning the entire army. The
end of this business was as unhappy as its beginning. Fletcher, our only
soldier, was sent aboard the frigate in which the Duke had sailed from
Holland. When the tide served, she set sail with him for Corunna in
Spain. With him she carried all our hopes of success, together with a
quantity of stores which would have been of use later in the expedition.
As I left the Cobb, or pier, which makes Lyme harbour, I saw the little
lame puppet-man turning away from the beach with a company of men who
wore our green boughs. For a few steps I hurried towards him, so that I
might overhear what he was saying; I made so sure that he was a spy. Mr.
Blick, to whom I told my fears, bade me not to worry myself. "Why, boy,"
he said, "there are five hundred spies in Lyme; but they can't hurt us.
Before they can get off to tell our enemies all about us there won't
be any enemies left. We shall be marching at once. We shall drive
everything before us." He spoke with such confidence that I believed
him; yet the old man troubled me, for all that. When you see a face
continually, at a time when you are excited, you connect the face with
your excitement; it troubles your nerves.

The day wore by with all the unreality of a day of confusion. I was kept
at work until the light was gone; then served at the Duke's table while
he supped, then snatched a hurried supper while he talked with his
officers. After supper, I had to go from billet to billet, looking for
people whom the officers wished to see. Something very important was in
the air. The discussion in the inn's great room was the first serious
council of the war. About eleven o'clock, Lord Grey came out of the
room, telling me to follow him. We went out into the street, where
presently our men began to fall in, four or five abreast, about a
hundred ranks of them. A few cavalry came, too, but not enough, I heard
Lord Grey say, not enough to do any good with. In spite of all the
efforts of those who loved us (by efforts I mean the robbing of
farm-stables) we were very short of horses. Those which we had were not
good; they were cart, not saddle-horses, unused to the noise of guns.
Still, such as they were, they formed up in the street ahead of the
foot. The force took a long time to form; for the men kept saying that
they had forgotten something, their powder-horn, their cartridges, their
guns, even. Then they had to run back to their billets to fetch whatever
it was, while those who remained behind, puzzled at the movement so late
at night, when they wished to sleep, began to get nervous. They began to
ask where it was that we were going, was it to Axminster, or to Bridport.

CHAPTER XVII. A VOICE AT DAWN

Word was passed about that we were going to surprise the militia at
Bridport at dawn. We were told to keep quiet on the march, after passing
Charmouth, as the night was so still that we should be heard far off. We
did not know how near the Bridport outposts might come to us under cover
of the night. "You come with us, Martin," said Lord Grey: "Take a horse.
If we win Bridport you'll have to gallop back with the news." I was
made a little nervous by the thought of going into battle so soon; but
gulping down my fears I mounted a marsh-mare which stood near the inn
door. I hoped sincerely that no militia bullet would find any part of
either of us. Then the drums began to play us out of the town with their
morning roll. A fife whined out, going down to our marrows with its
shrillness. Lights showed at the windows. We saw dark heads framed in
yellow patches. People called to us. In the door of the great inn stood
Monmouth; his face seemed very white in the glare of the torches. He
raised his hand to us as we passed him. The last thing I noticed of the
town, for I rode in the rear with Lord Grey, were the ranks passing the
lamp on the town hall. They came up to it in waves, their cloaks showing
in glimmer for an instant. Then they passed on into the night, sliding
forwards slowly with a steady roll, like the moving of waves to the
shore.

We were a long time riding; so long that the dawn was on us by the time
we were within shot of the enemy. I don't remember very much about the
ride, except that it was unreal, very unreal; for the mists came down,
blotting the world from us, so that we rode in a swirl of cold grey,
amid a noise of dropping. When we got to the top of the long hill after
Chideock I was bidden halt at a cross-roads, with a waggon full of
ammunition, while the force moved on to the attack. The hills were
showing up clearly above the mist; but the valley lay like a sea, a
great grey formless level, like some world of the ghosts. The troops
passed down in it, moving pretty briskly, lest the mist should lift
before they were in position. Most of them knew the country, so that
they could well walk confidently; but their quickness had something
nervous in it, as though they were ill at ease. Very soon they were out
of sight, out of hearing, swallowed up in the fog.

I waited a long time (as it seemed) up there at the cross-roads. After a
long wait I rode a little down the hill, from sheer anxiety. I pulled
up in a bank of cloud, through which I could see dimly, in the growing
light, for about a dozen yards. I was leaning well forward, listening
for the sound of shooting, when something made me look down. Someone
was standing at my side, slipping something into my pocket. It gave me a
start. I clutched at the person. It was the old lame puppet-man who
had been at Lyme the day before. "Latter for ee," he said in a whisper.
"Read en, unless you'm a fool." His hand pressed lightly on my bridle
hand for an instant; then he ducked sideways swiftly into the wilderness
of ferny gorse at the side of the road, where I could not hope to
follow him, even if the mist had not hidden him. Something in the voice,
something in the lightness of the touch startled me into the knowledge.
As he ducked, it came over me that this old man was Aurelia disguised,
come to spy upon us, but bent, also, on giving me a warning, some little
kind word of advice, at the beginning of my lord's war. I ought to have
recognized her before. I had been blind. She had been under my eyes the
whole day, yet I had never once suspected, no one, of all that army, had
suspected. She had been disguised by a master-hand. She had played her
part like a great actress. It was terrible to think of the risk she was
running. One man's suspicion, in a time of war, would have been enough
to give her to a horrible death. I tried to follow her into the jungle
into which she had vanished; but my horse would not face the furze. I
tried hard to see her, but it was no use; the tangle was too thick; she
had gone. I called out to her softly; but I got no answer; only, at some
little distance away, I heard a twig snap under a passer's foot.

In a momentary clearing of the mist, I pulled out my letter. It was
written in a fine, firm hand, with signature. It was a short, purposeful
letter, which kept sharply to the point. It only contained two lines.
"Your Duke's cause is hopeless. He has no possible chance. Take the
Axminster road to safety." That was the whole letter. It gave me a
feeling of uneasiness; but it did not tempt me to desert. I thought that
if I deserted I might very well be tortured into betraying all that I
knew of the Duke's plans, while I doubted very much whether the Duke's
body-servant would find mercy from the merciless, frightened King. What
was I to do, even if I escaped from the King's party? I was too young
for any employment worthy of my station in life. I had neither the
strength nor the skill for manual labour. Who would employ a boy of my
age on a farm or in a factory? All that I could hope would be to get
away to sea, to a life which I had already found loathsome. As to going
back to my uncle's house, I doubt if I would have gone, even had I had
the certainty of getting to it safely. When a boy has once taken to an
adventurous life, nothing but very ill health will drive him back to
home-life. Yet there was the thought of Aurelia. Somehow the thought
of her was a stronger temptation than any fear of defeat. I would have
liked to have seen that old enemy of mine again.

I was thinking over the letter, wondering what would come to the Duke's
cause, when the valley below me began to ring with firing. A heavy
fire had begun there. It thundered in a long roll, which died down,
momentarily, into single sputterings through which one could hear
shouting. About twenty minutes after the beginning of the shots, when
all the party on the hill-top were edging nearer to the battle, taking
a few steps at a time, on tenter-hooks to be engaged, we heard a great
gallop of horses' hoofs coming to us at full tilt. At first we
were scared by this, for the noise was tremendous, too great, we
inexperienced soldiers thought, to be caused by our little troop of
cavalry. We thought that it was the Bridport militia charging down on
us, after destroying our friends. The mist by this time was all blowing
clear, though wisps of it clung along the hedgerows in unreal rolling
folds. The day above was breaking in the sultry blue summer dimness. We
could see, I suppose, for a quarter of a mile, straight down the road.

We had swung round, facing towards Lyme, when the noise of the hoofs
first came to us. When the turn of the road showed us a squad of cavalry
coming to us at the charge, led by half a dozen riderless horses, we
waited for no more. We spurred up our nags in a panic, till we, too,
were going full tilt for Lyme, shouting out as we went any nonsense
which came to our heads. We were in a panic fear; I believe that the
horses in some way felt it too. We galloped back to Chideock as though
we were chased by witches, while the gun-firing at Bridport steadily
grew less, till at last it stopped altogether. At Chideock, some of the
cavalry came up with us. They were our own men, our own troop of horse,
not an enemy after all. The riderless horses were a few of the militia
charges which had been seized from a cavalry outpost to the west of the
town. We had bolted from our own crazy terror. But we were not the only
fleers. Our cavalry had bolted first, at the first volley outside the
town. It is unjust to say that they were afraid. Lord Grey was not a
coward; our men had stout hearts enough; but they had not reckoned
on the horses. The first discharge of guns scared the horses almost
frantic. They swung about out of action in a couple of seconds. Another
volley made them all bolt. It was when they were bolting that the men
began to grow alarmed. Fear is a contagious thing; it seems to pass
from spirit to spirit, like a flame along a powder train, till perhaps
a whole army feels it. Our horsemen pulled up among us in Chideock in
as bad a scare as you ever saw; it was twenty minutes before they dared
walk back to find out what had happened to the foot at Bridport, after
their retreat.

Our foot came back very angry with the horse. They had fired away a lot
of powder to very little purpose, before orders reached them, bidding
them retire. They had not wished to retire; but at last they had done
so sullenly, vowing to duck Lord Grey for deserting them. We had
taken about a dozen horses without harness, instead of the two hundred
equipped chargers which we had promised ourselves.

We had killed a few of the militia, so everybody said; but in the
confusion of the powder-smoke who could say how many? They were certain
that none of our own men had been killed; but in a force so newly
raised, who could say for certain which were our own men? As a matter
of fact several of our men had been taken by the royalists, which is as
much as to say that they had been killed. Altogether the affair had
been a hopeless failure from the very beginning. The foot had learned to
despise the horse. The horses had learned to be afraid of gun-fire. The
cavalrymen had learned to despise Lord Grey. The militia had learned to
despise us. The only valuable lesson that our men had learned was that
a battle was not so terrible a thing. You knelt down, fired your gun,
shouted, borrowed your neighbour's drinking bottle, took a long swig,
then fired again, with more shouting, till somebody clapped you on the
shoulder with orders to come away. But this lesson, precious as it was
did not console our men for their beating. They were cross with the long
night-march as well as with Lord Grey's desertion. We dragged our
way back to Lyme very slowly, losing a good fifty of our number by
desertion. They slipped away home, after falling out of the ranks to
rest. They had had enough of fighting for the Duke; they were off home.
The officers were strict at first, trying to stop these desertions; but
the temper of the men was so bad that at last they gave it up, hoping
that some at least would stay. That was another evil consequence of
fighting for the crown with an undisciplined mob; they could sustain
defeat as ill as they could use victory. We did not trail into Lyme
until after noon; for we marched like snails, fearing that the militia
would follow us. When we got into camp, the men flung their arms from
them, careless of the officer's orders. All that they wanted was sleep
(we had eaten a late breakfast at Charmouth), they were not going to
do any more soldier's foolery of drill, or sentry-go. As for Lord Grey,
whom everybody called a coward, the Duke could not cashier him, because
he was the best officer remaining to us. Poor Fletcher, who might have
made something of our cavalry, was by this time far away at sea. The
other officers had shown their incapacity that morning. For my own part,
I chose out a snug billet on a hearthrug in the George Inn, where I
slept very soundly for several hours. While I slept, the Duke held a
melancholy council to debate what could be done.

They say that he ought to have marched that morning to Exeter, where
Lord Albemarle's militia (all of them ripe for rebellion) would have
joined him.

Exeter or Bristol, one or the other, would have been a fine plume in
his cap, a strong, fortified town, full of arms, where he could have
established himself firmly. I do not know why he decided against
marching to Exeter. He may have had bad reports of troops being on the
road waiting for him; or he may have thought that his friends (who
were plentiful on the Bristol road) would rally to him as soon as he
appeared. He was deceived by those protesting gentry, his friends, who
had welcomed him so warmly only a few months before. He thought that all
the countryside was ready to join him. He had been deceived, as perhaps
a cleverer man would have been deceived, by the warmth of his welcome
on his earlier visit. An Englishman is always polite to a Duke when he
meets him in a friendly gathering. But when the Duke says, "Lend me all
your ready money, together with your horses, or rather give them to me,
since I am the King," his politeness leaves him; he gets away to London
to warn the police as fast as his horse will take him. Thus it was with
the Duke's friends scattered about along the main-road from Lyme to
Bristol.

I know not who persuaded the Duke to march; probably it was Grey; it may
have been Venner; it may have been a momentary mad resolution caused
by a glass of wine. They say that he was solemn about it, as though he
expected to fail. Perhaps he would have gone back to Holland if the ship
had been still in the harbour, but of course she had gone away. He would
not go in La Reina; for she was sluggish from barnacles, having been
long un-careened. The Channel at this time was full of ships looking for
him; how he escaped them when he sailed from Holland I cannot think. He
hesitated for a long time, poor man, before deciding; no man could have
acted more like a Stuart, at such a time. When the decision was made he
gave word to start early on the following morning. But this I did not
know till one A.M, when Lord Grey routed me out from my berth on the
hearth-rug, so that I might go from house to house, calling up our
officers.

I suppose that all our officers were out of bed by two o'clock, yet
it took them eight hours to get their men together, into some sort of
order. We were hardly ready for the road at ten A.M. when the drums
beat up to play us out of the town. As I was the Duke's servant, I was
allowed to ride by my master; I daresay people thought that I was the
young Prince. We marched up the hill gaily, with a multitude flocking
all about us, but there were many of that crowd who looked doubtfully
at my master's sad face, thinking that he looked over-melancholy for a
conquering king.

We marched out of Lyme into a valley, through a sort of suburb called
Uplyme. After that we marched steadily up hill, a long climb of two
miles, having a great view of the countryside on our left hand. Our
right was shut from us by a wooded hill. It was a warm, sunny June day:
the grass just ripe for hay harvest; the country at its best; everything
at its full flower, so that you wondered at the world's abundance. We
sent out scouts, when we were about a mile from Lyme; but when we were
at the top of the hill we could see for ourselves, without putting
scouts abroad. We could see horsemen on the high ground away to the
left, two or three hundred of them. Besides these there were some
companies of foot drawn up in good order in the fields outside
Axminster, at some distance from the town. When this army caught sight
of us, it began to file off towards the town, as though to dispute it
with us, so our advanced guard pushed on to drive them out of it.
The sight of so many men in order, was a very moving one. To see them
advance their colours, to see the light on the shifting steel, to hear
the low beating hum of the feet was stirring to the heart. Word ran
along the line that there was going to be a battle. Our foot left the
road, so as to spread out into line in the open, where they could take
up positions behind hedges. I was sent back to the rear at this instant,
to order up the ammunition waggons, so that I missed some part of the
operations; but I shall never forget how confidently our men spread out;
they marched as though they were going into the fields for partridges.
The drums began again, to hearten them, but there was no need for drums
in that company; they began to sing of their own accord, making a noise
which drowned the drums altogether. I gave my orders to the ammunition
waggons, which were blocked in a jumble of sightseers, camp-followers,
etc., etc., so that they could hardly move. The drivers got me to charge
my horse through the mob to make a path, which I did, with a good deal
of pain to myself, for the people thus thrust aside struck at me. The
drivers struck out at them in return; we had a little fight of our own,
while Axminster was being won.

CHAPTER XVIII. I SPEAK WITH AURELIA

The next thing which I remember was coming out of the mob with the
waggons just behind me, going at a smart pace to a position on the
army's right. The road was pretty full of all sorts of people; but as
we shouted for them to clear the way, they made a lane for us. I saw the
Duke's little clump of staff-officers on a pitch of rising ground, but
there was no firing; only a noise of many voices singing. Just as we
were about to turn off the road into the fields behind our right wing,
I saw the little old lame puppet-man sitting on a donkey by the ditch
at the side of the road. I shouted to the drivers to pass on, which they
did, at full tilt, while I drew rein by the old man's side. "Aurelia," I
said, "this is no place for you. Do get away from here before they find
you out."

"Why," she said, very calmly, in the broad burring man's voice which
she imitated so exactly. "I be come 'ere to find you out. You'm going to
your death, boy. You get out of this 'ere army afore you're took. I
tell ee thy Duke be a doomed man. Look at en's face. Why, boy, there be
eleven thousand soldiers a-marching to put er down. You've only a got
a quarter of that lot. Come out of en, boy. Do-an't ee be led wrong." I
was touched by her kind thought for me; she was risking her life for
me for the second time, but in the hurry of the moment I could not put
words together to thank her.

"Aurelia," I said, "I can't talk to you now. Only get out of this. Don't
stay here. I'm all right."

"No, Martin," she said, in her ordinary voice, "you're not all right.
Come out of this. Slip away tonight to Newenham Abbey. It be over there,
not more than a couple of miles. Oh, come, come. I can't bear to see you
going away to certain death. I KNOW that this force cannot win."

"Yes, Aurelia," I answered. "But I'm not going to be a hang-back for all
that. I'm not going to be a coward. You risk a horrible death, only to
tell me not to do the same. You wouldn't give up a cause you believed
in, merely because it was dangerous. I'll stick by my master, Aurelia.
Don't try to tempt me."

She would have said more; she would perhaps have persuaded me from my
heroics, had not the guns begun firing. That broke the spell with a
vengeance; nothing could be done after that. I shook up my horse, hardly
pausing to say "God bless you." In another minute she was out of sight,
while I was cantering off to the extreme right wing with the Duke's
orders to his officers to cut in on the road to Chard. As I rode along,
behind the scattered line of our men, I could see the rolls of smoke
from the firing on the left. The men on the right were not firing, but
being raw troops they were edging little by little towards the firing,
in which I do not doubt they longed to be, for the sake of the noise.
They say now that the Duke threw away this battle at Axminster. He could
have cut Albemarle's troops to pieces had he chosen to do so. They made
a pretty bold front till we were within gunfire of them, when they all
scattered off to the town pell-mell. While they were in the town, we
could have cut them off from the Chard road, which would have penned
them in while we worked round to seize the bridges. After that, one
brisk assault would have made the whole batch of them surrender. Some of
our officers galloped from our right wing (where I was) to see how the
land lay, before leading off their men as I had brought them word. A
few of them fired their pistols, when they came to the road, which was
enough to make the right wing double forward to support them without
orders. In a minute about a thousand of us were running fast after our
officers, while the Duke's aides charged down to stop us. He had decided
not to fight, probably thinking that it would do his cause no good by
killing a lot of his subjects so early in his reign. We know now that
had he made one bold attack that morning, the whole of Albemarle's
force, with the exception of a few officers, would have declared for
him. In other words we should have added to our army about a thousand
drilled armed men who knew the country through which we were to pass.
By not fighting, we discouraged our own army, who grumbled bitterly when
they found their second battle as ineffectual as the fight at Bridport.

I remember next that I saw the whole of Albemarle's troops flying for
their lives along the Chard road, flinging away their weapons as they
ran. They had the start of us; but a resolute captain could have brought
them to a stand, by pushing forward his cavalry. However "a bridge of
gold to a flying foe" is a good saying. We let them go. When our cavalry
advanced (to keep them on the move, not to fight with them) they passed
the time in collecting what the militia had flung away; about four
thousand pounds' worth of soldiers' stores, chiefly uniforms. I went
forward with the horse on that occasion. I picked up altogether about a
dozen muskets, which I gave to some of our men who were armed only with
clubs. Then I rode back to report myself ready for service to my master,
who was getting ready for camp, thinking that his men had done enough
for one day.

It was a sad waste of time. A rough camp was formed. We went no further
for that time. About half a precious day was wasted, which might have
brought us nearly to Taunton under a resolute man, sworn to conquer.
Some of our men went out to forage, which they did pretty roughly. It
was theft with violence, coloured over by some little touch of law.
The farmers who were unpopular thereabouts had their cattle driven off;
their ricks carted off; their horses stolen; their hen-roosts destroyed.
We were like an army of locusts, eating up everything as we passed. Our
promises to pay, when the King came to his own, were really additional
insult; for the people robbed knew only too well how Stuart kings kept
their promises. One strange thing I saw that night. The men who were
cooking their newly stolen beef at the camp-fires kept crying out for
camp-kettles in which to boil the joints. We had no camp-kettles; but an
old man came forward to the Duke's quarters to ask if he might show the
men how to cook their meat without kettles. The Duke at once commanded
him to show us how this might be done. Like most useful inventions, it
was very simple. It was one of those things which are forgotten as life
becomes civilised, but for want of which one may perish when one returns
to barbarity, as in war. The old man began by placing stout poles
in tripods over the camp-fires, lashing them firmly at the top with
faggot-binders. Then he took the hide of one of the slaughtered cattle,
gathering it up at the corners, so as to form a sort of bag. He cut some
long narrow strips from the hide of the legs, with which to tie the four
corners together. Then he lashed the four corners to the tripod, so that
the bag hung over the fire.

"There," he said. "There is your kettle. Now put water into en. Boil
thy victuals in er. That be a soldier's camp-kettle. You can carry your
kettle on your beef till you be ready for en."

Indeed, it proved to be a very good kind of a kettle after one got
used to the nastiness of it, though the smell of burning hair from the
kettles was disgusting. To this day, I have only to singe a few hairs
in a candle to bring back to my mind's eye that first day in camp at
Axminster, the hill, the valley ringed in by combes, the noise of the
horses, the sputtering of the fires of green wood, the many men passing
about aimlessly, wondering at the ease of a soldier's life after the
labour of spring ploughing. It was a wonderful sight, that first camp
of ours; but the men for the most part grumbled at not fighting; they
wanted to be pushing on, to seize the city of Bristol, instead of
camping there. How did they know, they said, that the weather would
keep fine? How were we to march with all our ten baggage waggons if the
weather turned wet, so that the roads became muddy? The roads in those
parts became deep quagmires in rainy weather. A light farmer's market
cart might go in up to the axles after a day's steady rain. To march
through such roads would break the men's hearts quicker than any
quantity of fighting, however disastrous. Thus they grumbled about the
camp-fires, while I bustled over the Duke's dinner, in the intervals of
running errands for the colonel.

That evening, after the summer dusk had come, but before the army had
settled to sleep, I heard an old man, one of our cavalrymen, talking to
another trooper. "Ah," he said, "I was fighting in the old wars under
Oliver. I've seen wars enough. You mark my words, boy, this army won't
do much. We've not got enough men, for one thing. We could have had
fourteen thousand or more if he'd thought to bring muskets for en. We've
not got cavalry, that's another thing. When us do come face to face with
all the King's men us shall be sore put to it for want of a few trusty
horses. Horsemen be the very backbones of armies in the field. Then,
boy, we not got any captains, that's worst of all. The Duke's no
captain. If he'd been a captain her'd have fought this morning. Them
others aren't captains neither, none of them. Besides, what are they
doing sitting down in camp like this when we ought to be marching?
Us ought to be marching. Marching all night, never setting down once,
marching in two armies, one to Exeter, one to Bristol. Us'd 'ave the two
towns by late tomorrow night if us was under old Oliver. It'll take us
a week to get to Bristol at this rate. By that time it will be full of
troops, as well as secured by ships. As for us, by that time we shall
have troops all round us, not to speak of club-men."

"Ah," said the younger man. "What be club-men, gaffer?"

"You'll know soon enough what club-men are," the old man answered, "if
there's any more of this drunken dirty robbery I saw this afternoon.
Those thieves who stole the farmer's cattle would have been shot in
Oliver's time. They'd have cast lots on a drum in sight of all on us,
drawn up. The men who got the low numbers would have been shot. The
captains would have pistolled them where they stood. If this robbing
goes on, all the farmers will club together to defend themselves, making
a sort of second army for us to fight against. That is what club-men
means. It's not a nice thing to fight in a country where there are
club-men all round you. No, boy. So what with all this, boy, I be going
to creep out of this 'ere army. I do-an't like the look of things, nor
I do-an't like the way things are done. If you take a old man's advice
you'll come too."

"Noa," said the honest oaf, "I be agoin' to vight. I be a-goin' to
London town to be a girt sol-dier."

"Ah," said the old man, shortly, "you be a vule, Tummas. Wish ee good
day, maister." Then the old man turned sharply on his heel to leave the
camp, which he did easily enough, for he knew several of the sentries.
Even if he had not known them, it would have made little difference,
because our sentries were so lax that the camp was always swarming with
strangers. Women came to see their husbands or sweethearts. Boys came
out of love of mischief. Men came out of curiosity, or out of some wish
to see things before they decided which side to take. Our captains were
never sure at night how many of their men would turn up at muster the
next morning.

After the old man had deserted, I sat down on the high ground above the
camp, in the earthen battery where our four little guns were mounted. I
was oppressed with a sad feeling that we were all marching to death. The
old man's words, "we shall have troops all round us," rang in my head,
till I could have cried. My mind was full of terrible imaginings. I
saw our army penned up in a little narrow valley where the roads were
quagmires, so that our guns were stuck in the mud, our horses up to
their knees, our men floundering. On the hills all round us I saw
the King's armies, fifty thousand strong, marching to music under the
colours, firing, then wheeling, forming with a glint of pikes, bringing
up guns at a gallop, shooting us down, while we in the mud tried to
form. I knew that the end of it all would be a little clump of men round
the Duke, gathered together on a hillock, holding out to the last. The
men would be dropping as the shot struck them. The wounded would waver,
letting their pike-points drop. Then' there would come a whirling of
cavalry, horses' eyes in the smoke, bright iron horse-shoes gleaming,
swords crashing down on us, an eddy of battle which would end in a hush
as the last of us died. I saw all these pictures in my brain, as clearly
as one sees in a dream. You must not wonder that I looked over the misty
fields towards Newenham Abbey with a sort of longing to be there, well
out of all the war. It was only a mile from me. I could slip away so
easily. I was not bound to stay where I was, to share in the misery
caused by my leader's want of skill. Then I remembered how my father had
believed in the right of the Duke's cause. He would have counselled me
to stay, I thought. It seemed to me, in the dusk of the night, that my
father was by me, urging me to stay. The thought was very blessed; it
cleared away all my troubles as though they had not been. I decided
to look no more towards Newenham; but to go on by the Duke's side to
whatever fortune the wars might bring us. Somehow, the feeling that my
father was by me, made me sure that we were marching to victory. I went
to my quarters comforted, sure of sleeping contentedly.

Like the rest of us, I had to sleep in the open, without any more
shelter than a horse-cloth. Even the Duke was without a tent that night.
He slept in camp with us, to set an example to his men, though he might
well have gone to some house in the town. I liked the notion of sleeping
out in the open. In fine warm summer weather, when the dew is not too
heavy, it is pleasant, until a little before the dawn, when one feels
uneasy, for some reason, as though an enemy were coming. Perhaps our
savage ancestors, the earliest ancient Britons, who lived in hill-camps,
high up, with their cattle round them, expected the attacks of their
enemies always at a little before the dawn; so that, in time, the
entire race learned to be wakeful then, lest the enemy should catch the
slumberers, with flint-axe heads in the skull. It may be that to this
day we feel the fear felt by so many generations of our ancestors. On
this first night in camp, I found that many of the men were sleeping
uneasily, for they did not know the secret of sleeping in the open. They
did not know that to sleep comfortably in the open one must dig a little
hole in the ground, about as big as a porridge bowl, to receive one's
hipbone. If you do this, you sleep at ease, feeling nothing of the
hardness of the bed. If you fail to do it, you wake all bruised, after a
wretched night's tumbling; you ache all the next day.

After grubbing up a hollow with my knife, I swathed myself in my blanket
with a saddle for pillow. I watched the stars for a while, as they
drifted slowly over me. The horses stamped, shaking their picket-ropes.
The sentries walked their rounds, or came to the camp-fires to call
their reliefs. The night was full of strange noises. The presence of so
many sleeping men was strange. It was very beautiful, very solemn. It
gave one a kind of awe to think that thus so many famous armies had
slept before the battles of the world, before Pharsalia, before Chalons,
before Hastings. Presently the murmuring became so slight that I fell
asleep, forgetting everything, only turning uneasily from time to time,
to keep the cool night wind from blowing on my cheeks so as to wake me.

It must have been two in the morning when I was wakened by some armed
men, evidently our sentries, who rolled me over without ceremony.

"Wake up, young master," they said, grinning. "You'm wanted. You be to
get up to go a errand. You be a soldier now. You does your sleeping in
peace-times when you be a soldier," I sat up blinking my eyes, in the
early light, thinking how nice t'other forty winks would be.

"Heigho," I yawned. "All right. I'm awake. What is it? What's the
matter?"

"Lord Grey be a wanting you, young master," said one of the men. "Down
there, where them horses be in the road." I picked myself up at that,
wishing for a basin of water into which I might shove my head.

"Yes, yes," I said. "Thank you. I'll go down." I left my blanket where
it was, as I expected to be back in a few minutes. I walked down hill
out of the camp to the road where the horses stood; there were four
horses, two of them mounted. The mounted men were regular country
bumpkins, with green sprays in their hats, like the rest of our men; but
their horses were pretty good, much better than most of those we had.
One of them was a stocky old cob, which was no doubt to be mine.
The other was a beast with handsome harness for Lord Grey. "Alas," I
thought. "No more sleep for me. I've got to ride. I wonder where we are
going." The men touched their hats to me; for as I was in the Duke's
retinue I was much respected. Some of them no doubt thought I was a
princeling or little lord.

"Where are we going?" I asked the troopers.

"Going scouting out towards Colyton yonder, sir," said one of them. "Us
be to pick up his Lordship in the town."

CHAPTER XIX. I MEET THE CLUB MEN

I wondered when I was to get breakfast; but I knew Lord Grey well enough
to know that he was not a man to go willingly without food for more than
a few hours at a time. Breakfast I should have presently, nor would it
be skin-boiled beef, smelling of singed hair. So I mounted my cob with
a good will. The first trooper rode by my side, the other waited for a
moment to examine the feet of Lord Grey's charger. He trotted after
us, leading the riderless horse, some fifty yards behind us. We trotted
smartly through Axminster, where we set the dogs barking. People sprang
from their beds when they heard us, fearing that we were an army coming
to fight. We cantered out of the town over the river, heading towards a
hilly country, which had few houses upon it. I looked back after leaving
Axminster, to see if Lord Grey wanted me. He had mounted his horse
somewhere in the town; but he was now a couple of hundred yards behind
us, riding' with a third man, whom I judged to be Colonel Foukes, by his
broad white regimental scarf. After we had gone a few miles, we came to
a cross-roads where my guide bade me halt to wait for orders. The others
had pulled up, too. I could see Lord Grey examining a map, while his
horse sidled about across the road. The trooper who had been riding with
him, joined us after a while, telling us to take the road to our right,
which would take us, he said, towards Taunton. We were to keep our eyes
skinned, he said, for any sign of armed men coming on the high-road from
Honiton, so as to threaten our left flank. The gentlemen were going to
scout towards the sea. At eight o'clock, if we had seen no trace of any
armed force coming, we were to make for Chard, where we should find the
Duke's army. We were to examine the roads for any signs of troops having
passed recently towards Taunton. We were to enquire of the country
people, if troops were abroad in that countryside, what troops they
might be, how led, how equipped, etc. If we came across any men anxious
to join the Duke we were to send them on to Chard or Ilminster, on the
easterly road to Taunton. We were to ride without our green boughs, he
said; so before starting on our road we flung them into the ditches.
Lord Grey waved his hand to us, as he turned away with his friend. We
took off our hats in reply, hardly in a soldierly salute; then we set
off at a walk along the Taunton road. It is a lonely road leading up to
the hills, a straight Roman road, better than any roads laid in England
at that time; but a road which strikes horror into one, the country
through which it runs is so bleak.

By about six o'clock (according to one of the troopers, who judged by
the height of the sun) we were in a clump of firs high up on a hill,
looking over a vast piece of eastern Devon. We had scouted pretty
closely all round Honiton, examining the country people, without hearing
of any troops. We were now looking out for some gleam upon a road, some
rising of dust over a hedge, some scattering of birds even, any sign
of men advancing, which might be examined more closely. The morning was
bright; but the valleys had mist upon them, which would soon turn to the
quivering blue June heat-haze. The land lay below us, spread out in huge
folds; the fields, all different colours, looked like the counties on a
map; we could see the sea, we could see the gleam of a little river. We
could see Axminster far to the east of us; but the marching army was out
of sight, somewhere on the Chard high-road. After scanning pretty well
all around us, I caught sight of moving figures on the top of one of the
combes to south of us. We all looked hard at the place, trying to make
out more of them. They were nearly a mile from us. They seemed to be
standing there as sentries. At first we thought that they must be people
with Lord Grey; but as we could see no horses we decided that they could
not be. One of the men said that as far as he'd heard tell like,
the combe on which they stood was what they call a camp, where soldiers
lived in the old time. He didn't know much more about it; but he said
that he thought we ought to examine it, like, before riding on to some
inn where we could breakfast.

The other man seemed to think so, too; but when we came to talk over
the best way of doing our espials, we were puzzled. We should be seen at
once if we went to them directly. We might be suspected if we approached
them on horseback. If the men went, they might be detained, because, for
all that we knew, the combe might be full of militia. So I said I had
better go, since no one would suspect a boy. To this the men raised a
good many objections, looking at each other suspiciously, plainly asking
questions with their raised eyebrows. I thought at the time that they
were afraid of sending me into a possible danger, because I was a
servant attached to the Duke's person. However, when I said that I would
go on foot, taking all precautions, they agreed grudgingly to let me go.

I crept along towards this combe on foot, as though I were going bird's
nesting. I beat along by the hedges, keeping out of sight behind them,
till I was actually on the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old
earthwork on the top. I took care to climb the slope at a place where
there was no sentry, which was, of course, not only the steepest bit of
the hill but covered with gorse clumps, through which I could scarcely
thrust my way. Up towards the top the gorse was less plentiful; there
were immense foxgloves, ferns, little marshy tufts where rushes grew,
little spots of wet bright green moss. Yellow-hammers drawled their
pretty tripping notes to me, not starting away, even when I passed close
to them. All the beauty of June was on the earth that day; the beauty of
everything in that intense blue haze was wonderful.

The top of the combe was very steep, steeper than any of the ascent,
because it had been built up like an outer wall by the savages who once
lived there with their cattle. I could see just the bare steep wall
of the rampart standing up in a dull green line of short-grassed turf
against the sky, now burning with the intense blue of summer. One hard
quick scramble, with my fingernails dug into the ground, brought my head
to the top of the rampart, beyond which I could see nothing but
great ferns, a forest of great ferns, already four or five feet high,
stretching away below, into the cup of the camp or citadel. I did not
dare to stand up, lest I should be seen. I burrowed my way among the
ferns over the wall into the hollow, worming my way towards the edge of
the fern clump so that I could see. In a minute, I was gazing through
the fern-stems into the camp itself; it was a curious sight.

About fifty people (some of them women) were sitting about a hollow
in the ground, which I guessed to be a sort of smokeless fireplace or
earth-oven. Everywhere else, all over the hollow of the camp, which
must have been a full three hundred yards across, were various kinds of
farm-stock, mostly cattle, though there were many picketed horses, too.
At first I thought that I had climbed into a camp of gipsies, which gave
me a scare; for gipsies then were a wild lot, whom wise folk avoided.
Then, as I glanced about, I saw a sentry standing not thirty yards from
me, but well above me, on the rampart top. He was no gipsy he was an
ordinary farmer's lad, with the walk of a ploughman. His sleeves, which
were rolled back, showed me a sun-burnt pair of arms, such as no gipsy
ever had. What puzzled me about him was his heavy double-barrelled
pistol, which he carried in his right hand, with something of a military
cock, yet as though awed by it. He was not over sure of that same
pistol. I could see that he confounded it in some way with art-magic.

Then I remembered what the old soldier had said the night before about
club men. This camp must be a camp of club men, I thought. They had come
there to protect their stock from the rapine of our vile pillagers, who
had spread such terror amongst the farmers the day before. Perched up
on the combe, with sentries always on the look-out, they could see the
Duke's raiders long before they came within gunshot. If an armed force
had tried to rush the camp, after learning that the beasts were shut up
within it (which, by the way, no man could possibly suspect until he
saw them from the rampart top), the few defenders clubbed together there
could have kept them out without difficulty; for there was only one
narrow entrance to the camp, so constructed that any one entering by it
could be shot at from three sides, if not from all four. I looked about
me carefully from my hiding-place, till I decided that I could get a
better view from another part of the fern clump. I began to wriggle
through the thick, sweet-scented stalks, towards the heart of the camp,
going with infinite care, so as not to break down the fern into a path.
I hoped to make no more stir among the fern-tops than would be made by
one of the many pigs scattering about in the enclosure.

While I was crawling along in this way, I suddenly heard a curious
noise from an intensely thick part of the fern in front of me. It was a
clinking noise, followed by a sort of dry rasping, as though a very big
person were gritting his teeth very hard. It stopped suddenly, but soon
began again. I thought that it must be some one mending harness with
a file, or perhaps some old sheep or cow, with the remnants of a bell
about her neck, licking a stone for salt. As was in an adventure,
I thought that I would see it out to the end; for I was enjoying my
morning. In spite of the want of breakfast I felt very like a red Indian
or a pirate, creeping through the jungle to the sack of a treasure
train. So I wormed on towards the noise. As I came near to it, I went
more cautiously, because in one of the pauses of the noise, I heard a
muttered curse, which told me that the unseen noise-maker was a man. If
I had been wise I should have stopped there; for I had learned all that
I came out to learn. But I was excited now. I wished to see everything,
before creeping away unseen to make my report. Perhaps I wished to see
something which had nothing to do with the club men, a private main
of cocks, say, or a dog, or bull-baiting, carried on with some of the
squire's creatures, but without his knowledge. I had a half wish that I
might have something of the kind to report; because in my heart I longed
to say nothing to any of the Duke's party which might lead to the ruin
of these poor people who were trying so hard to protect their property.

A few feet further on, I was wishing most heartily that I had never
left my room in London. It was like this. In the very heart of the fern
clump, where the ferns were tallest, a little spring bubbled out of
the ground, at the rate, I suppose, of a pint of water in a minute. The
ferns grew immensely thick there; but someone had thinned out a few of
the roots from the ground, leaving the uprooted plant with the ferns
still living, to form a rough kind of thatch above a piece of earth big
enough for a man's body. In the scented shade of this thatch, with
the side of his face turned towards me, a big, rough, bearded man sat,
filing away some bright steel irons which were riveted on his ankles. He
swore continually in a low whisper as he worked, not even pausing in his
curses when he spat on to the hollow scraped in the irons by his file.
He was the fiercest looking savage of a man I have ever seen. His face
had a look of stern, gloomy cruelty which I shall never forget. His
general appearance was terrible; for he had a face burnt almost black by
the sun (some of it may have been mud) with a nasty white scar running
irregularly all down his left cheek, along the throat to the shoulder.
He was not what you might call naked, a naked man, such as I have seen
since in the hot countries, would have looked a nobleman beside him. He
wore a pair of dirty linen knickerbockers, all frayed into ribbons at
the knees, a pair of strong hide slippers bound to his ankles by strips
of leather, a part of a filthy red shirt without sleeves, a hat stolen
from a scarecrow, nothing else whatever, except the mud of many days'
gathering. His shirt was torn all down the back in a great slit which
he had tried to secure by what the sailors call "Bristol buttons," i.e.
pieces of string. The red flannel hung from him so as to show his back,
all criss-crossed with flogging scars. I knew at once from the irons
that he was a criminal escaped from gaol; but the criss-crossed scars
taught me that he was a criminal of the most terrible kind, probably one
who had shipped into the Navy to avoid hanging.

I took in a view of him before he saw me. His image was stamped on my
brain in less than ten seconds. In the eleventh second, I was lying on
my back in the gloom of the fern-growth, with this great ruffian on my
chest, squeezing me by my windpipe. I cannot say that he spoke to me. It
was not speech. It was the snarling wild beast gurgle which passes for
speech in the slums of our great cities, as though all the filth of a
low nature were choking in the throat at once. He was on me too quickly
for me to cry out. I could only lie still, cackling for breath, while
the fierce face glowered down on me. I understood him to say that he
would have my windpipe out if I said a word. I suppose he saw that I was
only a very frightened boy; for his clutch upon me relaxed, after a few
awful, gasping moments. When he loosed his hold, his great hand pawed
over my throat till he had me by the scruff of the neck. He drew me over
towards the spring, as one would draw a puppy. Then, still crouching in
the fern, he hurried me to a single stunted sloe-bush which grew there.
"Go down, you," he said, giving me a shove towards the bush. "Down th'
'ole."

Just behind the sloe-bush, under a fringe of immense ferns, was an
opening in the earth, about eighteen inches high, by two feet across.
It was like a large rabbit or fox earth, except that the mouth of it was
not worn bare. I did not like the thought of going down th' 'ole; but
with this great griping fist on my nape there was not much sense in
saying so. I wormed my way in, helped on by prods from the file. It was
a melancholy moment when my head passed beyond the last filtering of
light into the tomb's blackness, where not even insects lived. After a
moment of scrambling I found that the passage was big enough for me to
go on all fours. It was a dry passage, too, which seemed strange to me;
but on reaching out with my hand I felt that the walls were lined with
well laid stones, unmortared. The roof above me was also of stone. You
may wonder why I did not shoot this ruffian with my pistol. You boys
think that if you had a pistol you would shoot any one who threatened
you. You would not. When the moment comes, it is not so easily disposed
of. Besides, a filthy, cursing pirate on your throat checks your natural
calm most strangely.

The passage led into the swell of the rampart for about twenty yards,
where it opened into a dimly lighted chamber about four feet high. A
little blink of light came through a rabbit hole, at the end of which
I saw a spray of gorse with the sunlight on it. I could see by the dim
light that the chamber was built of unmortared stones, very cleverly
laid. The floor of it was greasier than the passage had been, but still
it was not damp. On one side it had a bed of heather stalks, on the
other there was something dark which felt like cold meat. The man came
grunting in behind me, clinking his leg-irons. After groping about in a
corner of the room he lighted a stinking rushlight by means of a tinder
box.

CHAPTER XX. THE SQUIRE'S HOUSE

"There," he said, not unkindly, "there's a nice little 'ome for yer. Now
you, tell me wot you were doing spying on me. First of all, 'ave you
any money?" He did not wait for me to answer, but dug his hands into my
pockets at once, taking every penny I had, except a few shillings
which were hidden in my belt. He did not see my belt, as I had taken to
wearing it next my skin, since I began to follow the wars. I feared from
the greed which showed in all his movements that he vas going to strip
me; but he did not do so, thinking, no doubt, that none of my clothes
would fit his body.

"Well," he said, in his snarling beast voice, "wot's up 'ere, with all
these folk brought their beasts 'ere?"

I told him that the Duke had come co fight for the crown of England,
with the result, as I supposed, that the country people dared not trust
their live-stock at home, for fear of having them pillaged. He seemed
pleased at the news; but being an utter wild beast, far less civilized
than the lowest savage ever known to me, he showed his pleasure by
hoping that the rich (whom he cursed fluently) might have their heads
pulled off in the war, while as for the poor (the farmers close by us)
he hoped that they might lose every beast they owned. "Do 'era good,"
he said. "Now," he went on, "are you come spying 'ere along of the
farmers?"

"No," I said, "I am a servant of the Duke's, riding out to look for the
militia."

"Ah," he said. "Are yer, cocky? 'Ow'm I to know that?"

"Well," I said, "Look at my hands. Are they the hands of a farmer?"

"No," he said. "No, Mister stuck-up flunkey, they ain't. I s'pose yet
proud of yet 'ands. I'll 'ave yer wait at table on me." He seemed to
like the notion: for he repeated it many times, while he dug out hunks
of cold ham with his file, from the meat which I had felt as I crawled
in

   "'Ow proud I dig
     A'unk a cold pig"

he sang, as he gulped the pieces down. It was partly a nightmare, partly
very funny. I was not sure if he was mad, probably he was mad, but being
down in the burrow there, in the half darkness, hearing that song, made
me feel that I was mad; it was all a very terrible joke; perhaps madness
affects people like that. At last I spoke to him again.

"Sir," I said, "I've been up since two this morning. Give me a hunk of
cold pig, too. I'm half-starved."

"'Elp yourself, can't yer?" he snarled. "Oo'm I to wait on yer?" Then,
very cunningly, he put in, "'Ave you got a knife on yer?"

"No," I said cautiously, "I've got no knife," which was a lie; I did not
wish my knife to go the same way as the money. He gave me some cold
pig, very excellent ham it was, too, for which I was very thankful. He
watched my greediness with satisfaction. I ate heartily when I saw that
my confident way with him had made him more tender towards me.

"Yes," he snorted. "Per'aps you ain't been lying to me after all. Now
'ow long will these blokes be up the 'ill 'ere?" I did not know that;
but I supposed that they would go home directly the Duke's army had got
as far, say, as Taunton. "But," I added, "the Duke may be beaten. If
he's beaten, all this part will be full of troops beating every bush for
the rebels." He swore at this; but his curses were only designed to hide
his terror.

"Could a fellow get to sea," he said in a whining tone. "Could a poor
fellow in trouble slip away to sea, now, at one of these seaport towns?
Boy, I been livin' like a wild beast all the way from Bristol, this two
months. I didn't kill the feller; not dead. The knife only went into 'im
a very little way, not more'n a inch. I was raised near 'ere at a farm.
So I knowed of this 'ere burrow. I got 'ere two days ago, pretty near
dead. Now I been penned up from the sea by these farmers comin' 'ere,
doin' swottin' sentry-go all round me. I tell yer, I'll cut up sour, if
they pen me in, now I'm so near got away. I been with Avery. They call
Avery a pirate. They said I was a pirate. It's 'anging if they ketch
me. Do yer think I could get away to Lyme or some place, to get took
into a ship?" I told him, no; because I knew from what Lord Grey had
told me, that the Channel was full of men-of-war searching every
ship which hove in sight; besides, he did not look to me to be a very
promising hand for a captain to take aboard.

"All the same," he said, "I got to risk it. You say there may be troops
coming?"

"As for that," I answered, "the troops may be here at any moment from
Exeter or Honiton. They've arrested hundreds of people everywhere
around. You'd better stay in the burrow here." He did not pay much
attention to what I said. He cursed violently, as though he were a
bag-pipe full of foul words being slowly squeezed by some player. At
last he crawled to the passage, foaming out incoherently that he would
show them, he would, let them just wait.

"You stay 'ere," he said. "If I find you follerin' me, I'll mash your 'ed
into that much slobber." He showed me a short piece of rope which he had
twisted, sailor fashion, so as to form a handle for a jagged piece of
flint, which, as I could see, had been used on some one or something
quite recently.

"Mogador Jack," he said, "'e don't like people follerin' 'im." With that
he left me alone in the burrow, wondering, now that it was over, why he
had not killed me. He left me quite stunned; his sudden coming into my
life had been so strange. It was unreal, like a dream, to have been
in an ancient Briton's burial-chamber with a mad old pirate who had
committed murder. But now that he had gone, I was eager to go, too, if
it could be managed. I would not stay there till the brute came back, in
spite of that flint club. After waiting some little time, during which,
I felt sure, he was waiting for me at the door of the burrow, I took
out my pistol. I examined the charge to see that all was well; then very
cautiously, I began to crawl up the passage, with my pistol in my hand.

I waited for some minutes near the door, trying to convince myself by
the lie of the shadows outside that he was crouched there, ready for me.
But it seemed safe. I could see no shadow at all except the tremulous
fern-shadows. At last I took off my coat as a blind. I flung it through
the doorway, with some force, to see if it would draw him from his
hiding. Nothing happened. The ruffian did not pounce upon it. I took
a few long breaths to hearten me; it was now or never. I shut my eyes,
praying that the first two blows might miss my head, so that I should
have time to fire. Then, on my back, with my pistol raised over my head,
I forced myself out with every muscle in my body. I leaped to my feet on
the instant, quickly glancing round for the madman, swinging my pistol
about with my finger hard on the trigger. He was not there, after all.
I might have spared myself the trouble. I was alone there in the fern,
within earshot of a murmur of voices, talking excitedly. I was not going
to spy into any more secrets. I was going to get out of that camp cost
what it might. I made one rush through the fern in the direction of the
rampart, shoving the stalks aside, as a bull knocks through jungle in
Campeachy. In thirty steps I was clear of the fern, charging slap into a
group of people who were giving brandy to the sentry, whom I had passed
but a little while before. He was bleeding from a broken wound on his
pretty hard Saxon skull. He was not badly hurt, for he was swearing
lustily; but he had been stunned just long enough for my pirate man to
strip him. He was dressed now in a pair of leather gaiters, all the rest
of his things had been taken, the pistol with them, I saw all this at
a glance, as I charged in among them. I took it all in, guessing in one
swift gleam of comprehension, exactly what had happened there, as my
pirate made his rush for freedom. There was no time to ask if my guess
were right or not.

"Out of my way," I shouted, shoving my pistol towards the nearest of the
group. "Out of my way, or I shall fire." They made way for me. I charged
down hill by the way I had come. Some one cried "Stop en." Another
shouted "Shoot en, maister." There came a great bang of a gun over my
head. But I was going down hill like a rabbit, into the gorse, into the
bracken, into the close cover of the heath. Glancing back, I saw a dozen
excited people rushing down the rampart after me. Some flung stones;
some ran to catch horses to chase me. But I had the start of them. I was
down the hill, over the hedge, in the lane, in no time. There, a hundred
yards away, I saw my friends the troopers leading my cob. I shouted to
them. They heard me. They came up to me at a gallop. In ten seconds more
we were sailing away together.

"You been getting into scrapes, master," said one of the troopers. "You
doan't want to meddle with the folk in these parts."

"No," said the other, with a touch of insolence in his voice. "So your
master may find, one of these fine days." Being mindful of the Duke's
honour, I told the man to mind his own business, which he said he meant
to do, without asking my opinion. After that we rode on together a
little heated, till we were out of sight of the combe, where I had had
such a startling adventure.

After another hour of riding, we pulled up at the garden gate of an old
grey handsome house which stood at some distance from the road. I asked
one of the troopers who lived in this house. He said that it was an old
Abbey, which belonged to Squire; but that we were to leave word there
of the Duke's movements, "for Squire be very 'tached to the Protestants;
besides he'll give us a breakfast. Sure to." We left our horses at the
gate while we walked up to the house. A pretty girl, who seemed to know
one of the men, told us to come in, while she got breakfast for us.
"Squire," she said, "would be glad to hear what was going on; for he was
that given up to the soldiers we couldn't hardly believe." We were
shown down a long flagged corridor to a little cool room which looked as
though it had once been the abbot's cell. It had a window in it, looking
out upon a garden in full flower, a little rose garden, covered with
those lovely bushes of old English red single roses, the most beautiful
flower in the world. The window was large, but the space of it was
broken up by stone piers, so that no pane of glass was more than six
inches wide. I mention this now, because of what happened later. There
was not much furniture in the room; but what there was was very good.
There was an old Dutch pewter jug, full of sweet-williams, on the
table. On the wall' there was a picture of a Spanish gentleman on a
cream-coloured, fat handsome little horse. Together they looked very
like Don Quixote out for a ride with his squire. The two troopers left
me in this room, while they went off to the kitchen. Presently the
servant came in again, bringing me a noble dish of breakfast, a pigeon
pie, a ham, a jar of preserved quince, a honeycomb, a great household
loaf, newly baked, a big quart jug full of small beer. I made a very
honest meal. After eating, I examined the room. There was tapestry over
one part of the wall. It concealed a little low door which led to what
had once been the abbot's fishpond, now a roofed-in bath-house, where
one could plunge into eight feet or so of (bitterly cold) spring water.
This bath-house was some steps lower than the little dining room. It
was lighted by a skylight directly over the bath. It had no other window
whatever. After examining the bath, wishing that I had known of it
before eating, I went back to the dining room, where the servant was
clearing away the food.

"I hope you enjoyed your breakfast, sir," she said.

"Yes, thank you, very much indeed," I answered.

"Squire will be down d'reckly, sir," she said. "If you will please to
make yourself at home." I made myself at home, as she desired, while
she, after a few minutes, took away the soiled plates, leaving all the
other things on the side-board, ready for dinner. I noticed that she
smiled in a rather strange way as she drew to the door behind her.

I loitered away about half an hour, waiting for the squire to come. As
he did not come, I turned over the books on the shelves, mostly volumes
of plays, the Spanish Tragedy, the Laws of Candy, Love Lies a Bleeding,
etc., four plays to a volume in buckram covers. I was just getting
tired of All for Love, when I heard a footstep in the passage outside.
I thought that I would ask the passenger, whoever it might be, for
how much longer the squire would keep me waiting. I was anxious about
getting back to the army. It was dangerous to straggle too far from the
Duke's camps when unbeaten armies followed on both his wings. So I went
to the door to learn my fate at once. To my great surprise I found that
I could not open it. It was locked on the outside. The great heavy
iron lock had been turned upon me. I was a prisoner in the room there.
Thinking that it had been done carelessly, I beat upon the door to
attract the man who passed down the passage, calling to him to turn the
key for me so that I might get out. The footsteps did not pause. They
passed on, down the corridor, as though the man were deaf. After that
a fury came upon me. I beat upon the door for five minutes on end, till
the house must have rung with the clatter; but no one paid any attention
to me, only, far away, I heard a woman giggling, in an interval when I
had paused for breath. The door was a heavy, thick oak door, bound with
iron. The lock was a bar of steel at least two inches thick; there was
no chance of getting it open. Even firing into the lock with my little
pistol would not have helped me; it would only have jammed the tongue of
steel in its bed. I soon saw the folly of trying to get out by the door;
so I turned to the window, which was more difficult still, or, if not
more difficult, more tantalizing, since it showed me the free garden
into which one little jump would suffice to carry me. But the closely
placed piers of stone made it impossible for me to get through the
window. It was no use trying to do so. I should only have stuck fast,
midway. I began at once to pick out the mortar of the pier stones with
my knife point. It was hopeless work, though, for the old monks had used
some cement a good deal harder than the stones which it bound together.
I could only dig away a little dust from its surface. That way also was
barred to me. Then I went down to the bathing-chamber, hoping that there
would be some way of escape for me there. I hoped that the escape pipe
of the bath might be a great stone conduit leading to a fish-pond in
the garden. It was nothing of the sort. It was a little miserable leaden
pipe. I beat all round the walls, praying for some secret door, but
there was nothing of any use to me, only a little iron ventilator high
up, big enough to take my head, but nothing more. As for the skylight
over the bath, it was beyond my reach, high up. For the moment I could
see no means of getting to it. I went back to the dining room to give
another useless pounding to the door. My head was full of miserable
forebodings; but as yet I suspected merely that I had been caught by
some sudden advance of militia. Or perhaps the squire had laid plans
to get information from one who knew the Duke. Perhaps I had been lured
away specially by one hungry for the King's good opinion. Or could it be
Aurelia? Whatever it was, I was trapped, that was the terrible thing. I
was shut up there till my enemy, whoever it was, chose to deal with me.
I was in arms against the ruling King of England; everybody's hand would
be against me, unless my own hands helped me before my enemies came.
My first thought was to get the table down the steps, to make a bridge
across the bath, from which I could reach the skylight. This I could not
do at first; for being much flustered, I did not put the table-leaves
down. Until I knocked them down in my hurry they kept me from dragging
the table from the dining room. When I got it at last into the
bath-room, I found that it would not stretch across the water: the legs
were too close together, as I might have seen had I kept my wits about
me. I could think of no other way of getting out.

I went back disheartened to the dining room, dragging my coat behind
me. The first thing which I saw was a letter addressed to me in a hand
already known to me. The letter lay on the floor on the space once
covered by the table. As it had not been there when I dragged the table
downstairs, someone must have entered the room while I was away. I
opened the letter in a good deal of flurry. It ran as follows:

"Dear Martin Hyde:--As you will not take a sincere friend's advice, you
have to make the best of a sincere adviser's friendship. You did me a
great service. Let me do you one. I hope to keep you an amused prisoner
until your captain is a beaten man. By about three weeks from this 26th
of June we shall hope to have made you so much our friend that you will
not think of leaving us. May I make a compact with you? Please do not
shoot me with that pistol of yours when I bring you some supper tonight.
That is one part of it. The other is this. Let us be friends. We know
all about you. I have even talked to Ephraim about you. So let us make
it up. We have been two little spit fires. At any rate you have. Let us
be friends. What sorts of books do you like to read? I shall bring you
some story-books about ghosts, or about red Indians. Which do you like
best? I like red Indians myself. I suppose you, being a man, like ghosts
best. Your sincere friend Aurelia Carew. Who by the by thinks it best
to warn you that you had not better try to get up the chimney, as it is
barred across. She hopes that the table did not fall into the bath."

CHAPTER XXI. MY FRIEND AURELIA AND HER UNCLE

It was a friendly letter, which relieved me a good deal from my
anxieties; but what I could not bear was the thought that the Duke would
think me a deserter. I made up my mind that I would get away from that
house at the first opportunity, so as to rejoin the Duke, to whom I felt
myself pledged. But in the meantime, until I could get away, I resolved
to make the best of my imprisonment. I was nettled by Aurelia's tone of
superiority. I would show her, as I had shown her before, that my wits
were just as nimble as hers. A few minutes after the letter had been
read, she held a parley with me through the keyhole.

"Mr. Martin Hyde. Are you going to shoot me?"

"No, Miss Carew, though I think you deserve it."

"You won't try to get away if I open the door?"

"I mean to get away as soon as ever I get half a chance."

"I've got three men with me at the door here."

"Oh. Very well. But you just wait till I get a chance."

"Don't be so bloodthirsty, Mr. Martin Hyde. Now, I'm coming in to talk
with you. No pistols, mind. Not one."

"I've promised I won't shoot. You might believe a fellow. But I mean to
get away, remember. Just to show you."

She opened the door after that, a brown, merry Aurelia, behind whom I
could see three men, ready to stop any rush. They closed the door behind
her after she had entered.

"Well," she said, smiling. "Will you not shake hands with me, Martin
Hyde?"

"Yes," I said, "I will shake hands. But you played a very mean trick, I
think. There."

"You mustn't think me mean," she answered. "I don't like mean people.
Now promise me one thing. You say you are going to run away from us. You
won't run away from me when I am with you, will you?"

"No," I said, after thinking this over, to see if it could be twisted
into any sort of trap, likely to stop my escape. "I will not. Not while
I am with you."

"That's right," she said. "We can go out together, then. Now you've
promised, suppose we go out into the garden."

We went into the garden together, talking of every subject under the sun
but the subject nearest to our hearts at the moment. I would not speak
of her capture of me; she would not speak of the Duke's march towards
Taunton. There was some constraint whenever we came near those subjects.
She was a very merry, charming companion; but the effect of her talk
that morning was to make me angry at being trapped by her. I looked over
the countryside for guiding points in case I should be able to get away.
Axminster lay to the southeast, distant about six miles; so much I could
reckon from the course of our morning's ride. I could not see Axminster
for I was shut from it by rolling combes, pretty high, which made a
narrow valley for the river. To the west the combes were very high,
strung along towards Taunton in heaps. Due east, as I suspected, quite
near to us, was Chard, where by this time the Duke must have been
taking up his position. Taunton I judged (from a mile-stone which we had
passed) to be not much more than a dozen miles from where I was. I have
always had a pretty keen sense of position. I do not get lost. Even in
the lonely parts of the world I have never been lost. I can figure out
the way home by a sort of instinct helped by a glimpse at the sun. When
I go over a hill I have a sort of picture-memory of what lies behind,
to help me home again, however tortuous my path is on the other side. So
the few glimpses which I could get of the surrounding country were real
helps to me. I made more use of them than Aurelia suspected.

We were much together that day. Certainly she did her best to make my
imprisonment happy. In the evening she was kinder; we were more at ease
together; I was able to speak freely to her.

"Aurelia," I said, "you risked your life twice to warn me."

"That's not quite true, Martin," she said. "I am a government spy,
trusted with many people's lives. I had other work to do than to warn a
naughty boy who wanted to see what the ghosts were." I was startled at
her knowing so much about me; she laughed.

"Well," she said, "I like you for it. I should have wanted to see them
myself. But the ghost-makers are scattered far enough now."

"All the same, Aurelia," I said, "I thank you for what you did for me. I
wish I could do something in return." She laughed.

"Well," she said, "you were very kind in the ship. You were a good enemy
to me then. Weren't you?"

"Yes," I said, "I beat you properly on the ship. I carried the Duke's
letters in my pistol cartridges, where you never suspected them. The
letters which were in the satchel I forged myself after I got on board.
If you'd not been a silly you'd have seen that they were forged."

"So that was why," she said. "Those letters gave everybody more anxious
work than you've any notion of. Oh, Martin, though, I helped to drug you
to get those letters. It was terrible. Terrible. Will you ever forgive
me?"

"Why, yes, Aurelia," I said. "After all, it was done for your King. Just
as I mean to run away from here to serve mine. All is fair in the King's
service. Let us shake hands on that." We shook hands heartily, looking
into each other's eyes.

"By the way," I said, "where did you get to that day in Holland, when I
got the letters from you?"

"Ah," she answered, "you made me like a wildcat that day. I nearly
killed you, twice. You remember that low parapet on the roof? I was
behind that, waiting for you with a loaded pistol. You were all very
near your deaths that morning. In the King's service, of course.
For just a minute, I thought that you would climb up to examine that
parapet. What a crazy lot you all were not to know at once that I was
there! Where else could I have been?"

"Well," I answered, "I beat you in the ride, didn't I? You thought
yourself awfully clever about that horse at the inn. Well, I beat
you there. I beat you in the race. I beat you with my letters to the
Dutchman. I beat you over those forgeries."

"Yes, indeed," she said. "I can beat all the men in your Duke's service.
Every one. Even clever Colonel Lane. Even Fletcher of Saltoun. But a
boy is so unexpected, there's no beating a boy, except with a good
birch rod. You beat me so often, Martin, that I think you can afford to
forgive me for tricking you once in bringing you here."

"I shall beat you in that, too, Miss Carew," I said; "for I mean to get
away from you as soon as I can."

"So you say," she said. "But we have club men walking all round this
house all night, as well as sentries by day, guarding the stock.
Your gang of marauders will find a rough welcome if they come for
refreshments here."

Even as she spoke, there came a sudden crash of fire-arms from the
meadows outside the garden. About a dozen men came hurrying out of the
house with weapons in their hands, among them a big, fierce-looking
handsome man, who drew his sword as he ran.

"That is my uncle, Travers Carew," said Aurelia. "He owns this property.
He wants to meet you." There came another splutter of fire-arms from the
meadows. "Come," she said. "We'll see what it is. It is the Duke's men
come pillaging."

We ran through a gate in the wall into an apple-orchard, where the Carew
men were already dodging among the trees towards the enemy. There was
a good deal of shouting, but the tide of battle, as they call it, the
noise of shots, the trampling of horses, had already set away to the
left, where the enemy were retreating, with news, as I heard later, that
the militia held the Abbey in force. The Carew men came back in a few
minutes with a prisoner. He had been captured while holding the horses
of two friends, who had dismounted to drive off some of the Carew
cattle. He said that the attack had been made by a party of twenty of
the Duke's horse, sent out to bring in food for the march. They had
scattered at the first discharge of fire-arms, which had frightened them
horribly, for they had not expected any opposition. The frightened men
never drew rein till they galloped their exhausted horses into Chard
camp, where they gave another touch of dejection to the melancholy Duke.
As for the prisoner, he was sent off under guard to Honiton gaol; I
don't know what became of him. He was one of more than three thousand
who came to death or misery in that war. They said that he was a young
farmer, in a small way, from somewhere out beyond Chideock. The war
had been a kind of high-spirited frolic for him; he had entered into it
thoughtlessly, in the belief that it would be a sort of pleasant ride to
London, with his expenses paid. Now he was ended. When he rode out with
bound hands from the Carew house that evening, between two armed riders,
he rode out of life. He never saw Chideock again, except in the grey
light of dawn, after a long ride upon a hurdle, going to be hanged
outside his home. Or perhaps he was bundled into one of the terrible
convict ships bound for Barbadoes, with other rebels, to die of
small-pox on the way, or under the whip in the plantations.

After this little brush, with its pitiful accompaniment, which filled
me full of a blind anger against the royal party, so much stronger, yet
with so much less right than ours, I was taken in to see Sir Travers
Carew. He had just sent off the prisoner to Honkon, much as he would
have brushed a fly from his hand. He had that satisfaction with himself,
that feeling of having supported the right, which comes to all those who
do cruel things in the name of that code of unjust cruelty, the criminal
law. He looked at me with rather a grim smile, which made me squirm.

"So," he said, "this is the young rebel, is it? Do you know that I could
send you off to Honiton gaol with that poor fellow there?" This made my
heart die; but something prompted me to put a good face on it.

"Sir," I said, "I have done what my father thought right. I don't wish
to be treated better than any other prisoner. Send me to Honiton, sir."

"No," he said, looking at me kindly. "I shall not send you to Honiton.
You are not in arms against the King's peace, nor did you come over from
Holland with the Duke. I can't send you to Honiton. Besides, I knew your
father, Martin. I was at college with him. He was a good friend of
mine, poor fellow. No, sir, I shall keep you here till the Duke's crazy
attempt is knocked on the head. I think I can find something better for
you to do than that fussy old maid, your uncle, could. But, remember,
sir. You have a reputation for being a slippery young eel. I shall take
particular pains to keep you from slipping out of my hands. But I do not
wish to use force to your father's son. Will you give me your word not
to try to escape?"

"No," I answered, sullenly. "I won't. I mean to get away directly I
can."

"Come," he said kindly, "we tricked you rather nastily. But do you
suppose, Martin, that your father, if he were here, would encourage your
present resolutions? The Duke is coming (nearly unprepared) to bring a
lot of silly yokels into collision with fully trained soldiers ten times
more numerous. If the countryside, the gentry, the educated, intelligent
men, were ready for the Duke, or believed in his cause, they would join
him. They do not join him. His only adherents are the idle, ignorant,
ill-conditioned rogues of this county, who will neither fight nor obey,
when it comes to the pinch. I do not love the present King, Martin, but
he is a better man than this Duke. The Duke will never make a king. He
may be very fit for court-life; but there is not an ounce of king in
him. If the Duke succeeds, in a year or two he will show himself so
foolish that we shall have to send for the Prince of Orange, who is a
man of real, strong wisdom. We count on that same prince to deliver us
from James, when the time is ripe. It is not ripe, yet. I am telling you
bitter, stern truth, Martin. Now then. Let me have your promise not to
continue in the service of this doomed princeling, your master. Eh? What
shall it be?"

"No," I said, "that's desertion."

"Not at all," he answered. "It is a custom of war. Come now. As a
prisoner of war, give me your parole."

"You said just now that I was not a prisoner of war," I answered.

"Very well, then," he said. "I am a magistrate. I commit you add
suspected person. Hart! Hart!" (Here he called in a man-servant.) "Just
see that this young sprig keeps out of mischief. Think it over, Mr.
Martin. Think it over."

In a couple of minutes I was back in my prison cells, locked in for the
night, with neither lamp nor candle. A cot had been made up for me in a
corner of the room. Supper was laid for me on the table, which had been
brought back to its place. There was nothing for it but to grope to bed
in the twilight, wondering how soon I could get away to what I still
believed to be a righteous cause in which my father wished me to fight.
I slept soundly after my day of adventure. I dreamed that I rode into
London behind the Duke, amid all the glory of victory, with the people
flinging flowers at us. But dreams go by contraries, the wise women say.

I was a full fortnight, or a little more, a prisoner in that house.
They treated me very kindly. Aurelia was like an elder sister. Old Sir
Travers used to jest at my being a rebel. But I was a prisoner, shut
in, watched, kept close. The kindness jarred upon me. It was treating
me like a child, when I was no longer a child. I had for some wild weeks
been doing things which few men have the chance of doing. Perhaps, if I
had confided all that I felt to Aurelia, she would have cleared away my
troubles, made me see that the Duke's cause was wrong, that my father
would wish his son well out of civil broils, however just, that I had
better give the promise that they asked from me. But I never confided
really fully in her. I moped a good deal, much worried in my mind. I
began to get a lot of unworthy fancies into my head, silly fancies,
which an honest talk would have scattered at once. I began to think from
their silence about the Duke's doings that his affairs were prospering,
that he was conquering, or had conquered, that I was being held by this
loyalist family as a hostage. It was silly of me; but although in many
ways I was a skilled man of affairs, I had only the brain of a child, I
could not see the absurdity of what I came to believe. It worried me so
much that at the end of my imprisonment I became very feverish; really
ill from anxiety, as prisoners often are. I refused food for the latter
part of one day, hoping to frighten my captors. They did not notice it,
so I had my pains for nothing.

I went to bed very early; but I could not sleep. I fidgeted about till
I was unusually wakeful. Then I got out of bed to try if there was a
way of escape by the old-fashioned chimney, barred across as it was,
at intervals, by strong old iron bars. I had never thought the chimney
possible, having examined it before, when I first came to that house;
but my fever made me think all things possible; so up I got, hoping that
I should have light enough to work by.

CHAPTER XXII. THE PRIEST'S HOLE

It was too dark to do much that night, but I spent an hour in picking
mortar from the bricks into which the lowest iron bar had been let.
After a brief sleep I woke in the first of the light (at about one
o'clock) ready to go at it again. My fever was hot upon me. I don't
think that I was quite sane that day; but all my reason seemed to burn
up into one bright point, escape, escape at all costs, then, at the
instant. I must tell you that the chimney, like most old chimneys, was
big enough for a big boy to scramble up, in order to sweep it. For some
reason, the owners of the house had barred the chimney across so that
this could not be done. They swept it, probably, in the effective
old-fashioned way by shooting a blank charge of powder from a
blunderbuss straight up the opening. The first two iron bars were so
placed that it was only necessary to remove one to make room for my
body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had
not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There
was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down
at me. Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt
that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that
square on to the leads, then down by a water-spout, evading the
sentries, over the garden wall to freedom. After half an hour of mortar
picking I got one end of the lowest iron bar out of its socket. Then I
picked out the mortar from the other end, working the bar about like a
lever, to grind the fulcrum into dust. Soon I had the bar so loose that
I was able to thrust it to one side, leaving a passage big enough for my
body.

I was very happy when this was done. I went back to the room to make up
a packet of food to take with me. This I thrust into an inner pocket,
before launching out up the hole. When I had cleaned up the mess of
mortar, I started up the chimney, carefully replacing the bar behind
me. Soon I was seven or eight feet above the room, trying to get at the
upper bars. I was scrambling about for a foothold, when I noticed, to
my left, an iron bar or handle, well concealed from below by projecting
bricks. I seized hold of it with my left hand, very glad of the support
it offered, when, with a dull grating noise, it slid downwards under my
weight, drawing with it the iron panel to which it was clamped. I had
come upon a secret chamber in the chimney; there at my side was an
opening big enough for a man's body. I was pretty well startled by it,
not only by the suddenness of the discovery, but from the fear I had
lest it should lead to some inhabited room, where my journey would be
brought to an end. I peered into it well, before I ventured to enter.
It was a little low room, about five feet square, lit by two loopholes,
which were concealed from outside by the great growth of ivy on the side
of the house. I clambered into it with pleasure, keeping as quiet as I
could. It was a dirty little room, with part of its floor rotten from
rain which had beaten in through the loopholes. It had not been used for
a great while. The pallet bed against the wall was covered with rotten
rags, dry as tinder. There were traces of food, who could say how
ancient, in a dish by the bed. There was a little crucifix, with a
broken neck-chain, lying close to the platter. Some priest who had used
this priest-hole years before had left it there in his hurry; I wondered
how. Something of the awe which had been upon him then seemed to linger
in the place. Many men had lain with beating hearts in that room; the
room seemed to remember. I have never been in a place which made one's
heart move like that room. Well. The priest's fears were dead as the
priest by this time. Nothing but the wreck of his dinner, perhaps the
last he ever ate, remained to tell of him, beside the broken symbol of
his belief. I shut-to the little panel-door by which I had entered, so
that I might not have the horrible fancy that the old priest's shaven
head was peering up the chimney at me, to see what I was doing in his
old room, long since given over to the birds.

As I expected, there was a way of escape from the hiding-place. A big
stone in the wall seemed to project unnecessarily; the last comer to
that room had shut the door carelessly; otherwise I might never have
found it. Seeing the projecting stone, I took it for a clue feeling all
round it, till I found that underneath it there was a groove for finger
tips. The stone was nothing more than a large, cunningly fashioned
drawer, which pulled out, showing a passage leading down, down, along
narrow winding steps, just broad enough for one man to creep down at a
time. The stairs were more awesome than the room, for they were dark. I
could not see where they led; but I meant to go through this adventure,
now that I had begun it. So down I crept cautiously, clinging to the
wall, feeling with my feet as I went, lest there should be no step,
suddenly, but a black pit, far down, into which a man might fall
headlong, on to who knows what horrors. I counted the steps. I thought
that they would never end. There were thirty-seven altogether. They
brought me to a dark sort of room, with damp earth for its floor, upon
which water slowly dropped from some unseen stalactite. I judged that
I must be somewhere under the bath-chamber, not more than ten feet from
the abbot's old fish-pond. If there was a way out I felt that it must
be to my left, under the garden; not to my right, which would lead back
under the body of the house.

Very cautiously I felt along to my left, till I found that there was
indeed a passage; but one so low that I had to stoop to get along it. A
few steps further brought me with a shock against a wall, a sad surprise
to me, for I thought that I was on the road to safety. When I recovered
from my fear I felt along the wall till I found that the passage
zigzagged like a badger's earth. It turned once sharply to the right,
going up a couple of steps, then again sharply to the left, going up a
few more steps, then again to the right up one step more, to a broader
open stretch, lit by one or two tiny chinks, more cheering to me than
you can imagine. I guessed that I was passing at last under the garden,
having gone right below the house's foundations. The chinks of light
seemed to me to come from holes worn in the roof by rabbits or rats.
They were pleasant things to see after all that groping in the blackness
of night. On I went cautiously, feeling my way before me, till suddenly
I stopped dead, frightened terribly, for close to me, almost within
touch as it seemed, some men were talking to each other. They were
evidently sitting just above my head, in the cool morning, watching
for me to come through my window, as I suppose. They were some of Sir
Travers's sentries. A moment's thought told me that I had little to
fear from them, if I moved quietly in my burrow. However, as my walk was
often noisy, through stumblings on stones, I waited till they moved off,
which was not for some minutes. One of the men was asking the other what
was the truth about the Duke.

"Why," his mate answered, "they say as he got beat back coming towards
London. They say he be going to Bridgewater, now, to make it a castle,
like; or perhaps he be a coming to Taunton. They say he have only a mob,
like, left to en, what with all this rain. But I do-an't know. He be
very like to come here agen; so as us'll have to watch for our stock."

"Ah?" said the first. "They did say as there was soldiers come to
Evilminster. So as to shut en off, like. I seed fires out that way,
myself, like camp-fires, afore it grew light. They do say the soldiers
be all for the Duke."

"Yes," the other answered, "he be very like to win if it come to a
battle. He'd a got on to London, I dare-say, if the roads had but been
dry."

"What do ee say to a bit of tobaccy, master?" said the first, after a
pause.

"Why, very well," said the other. At this instant, without any warning,
something in the wall of my passage gave way, some bit of rotten mortar
which held up a stone, or something of the sort. At any rate, a stone
fell out, with a little rush of rotten plaster, making a good deal of
noise, though of course it seemed more to me than to the men outside.

"What ever in the world was that?" said one of them.

"I dunno," said the other. "It seemed to come from down below somewhere,
under the earth, like. Do you think as it could be a rabbit?"

"It did sound like a stone falling out of a wall," came the answer. "I
dunno. Where could it a come from?"

They seemed to search about for some trace of a rabbit; but not finding
any, they listened for another stone to fall.

"I tell you what I think," said the first man. "I believe as there be
underground passages all over these here gardens. Some of them walks
sound just as hollow as logs if you do stamp on 'em. There was very
queer doings here in the old monks' time; very queer. Some day I mean to
grub about a bit, master. For my old grandmother used always to say as
the monks buried a lot of treasure hereabouts in the old time."

"Ah?" said the other. "Then shall us get a spade quiet like, to see if
it be beneath." The other hesitated, while my heart sank. I very nearly
went back to my prison, thinking that all was over.

"No," said his comrade. "Us'll ask Sir Travers first. He do-an't like
people grubbing about. Some of his forefathers as they call them weren't
very good, I do hear, neither. He do-an't want none of their little
games brought to light, like."

After this, the men moved off, to some other part of their beat. I went
on along the passage quickly, till suddenly I fell with a crash down
three or four steps into a dirty puddle, knocking my head as I fell. I
could see no glimmer of light from this place; but I groped my way out,
up a few more steps further on into a smaller, dirtier passage than the
one which I had just left. After this I had to crawl like a badger in
his earth, with my back brushing against the roof, over many masses of
broken brickwork most rough to the palms of my hands. All of a sudden
I smelt a pleasant stable-smell. I heard the rattle of a halter drawn
across manger bars. I heard a horse paw upon the ground quite close to
me. A dim, but regular chink of light showed in front of me, level with
my head as crawled. Peering through it, I saw that I was looking into a
stable, almost level with the floor; the passage had come to an end.

By getting my fingers into the crack through which I peered, I found
that I could swing round some half a dozen stones, which were mortared
together, so as to form a revolving door. It worked with difficulty,
as though no one had passed through by that way for many years; but
it worked for me, after a little hard pushing. I scrambled through the
narrow opening into a roomy old stable, where some cart-horses peered
at me with wonder, as I rose to my feet. After getting out, I shut to
my door behind me, so firmly that I could not open it again; there must
have been some spring or catch which I could not set to work. Two steps
more took me out of the horses' stalls into the space behind, where, on
a mass of hay, lay a carter, fast asleep, with the door-key in his hand.
By his side lay a pitchfork. He was keeping guard there, prepared to
resist Monmouth's pillagers.

He slept so heavily that I was tempted to take the key from his hand.
Twice I made little half steps forward to take it; but each time
something in the man's look daunted me. He was a surly-looking man who,
if roused suddenly, in a locked stable, might lay about him without
waiting to see who roused him. He stirred in his sleep as I drew near
him for the second time; so I gave up the key as a bad job. The loft
seemed to be my only chance; as there was only this one big locked
double door upon the lower floor, I clambered up the steep ladder to the
loft, hoping that my luck there might be better, but resolved, if the
worst came, to hide there in the hay until the carter took the horses to
work, leaving the doors open.

I had hardly set my foot upon the loft floor, when one of the horses,
hearing some noise outside, or being moved by some evil spirit, whinnied
loudly, rattling his halter. The noise was enough to arouse an army. It
startled the carter from his bed. I heard him leap to his feet with an
oath; I heard him pad round the stable, talking to the horses in turn; I
heard him unlock the door to see what was stirring. I stood stock-still
in my tracks, not daring to stir towards the cover of the hay at the
farther end of the loft. I heard him walk slowly, grunting heavily,
to the foot of the ladder, where he stopped to listen for any further
signal. If he had come up he must have caught me. I could not have
escaped. But though he seemed suspicious he did not venture further. He
walked slowly back to his bed, grunting discontentedly. In a few minutes
he was sound asleep again; for farming people sleep like sailors, as
though sleep were a sort of spirit muffling them suddenly in a thick
felt blanket. After he had gone off to sleep, I took off my boots, in
order to put them on under my stockings, for the greater quiet which
that muffling gives to the tread. Then I peered about the loft for a way
of escape.

There were big double doors to this upper loft, through which the hay
could be passed from a waggon standing near the wall. These doors were
padlocked on the inside; there was no opening them; the staples were
much too firm for me to remove without a crowbar. The other openings in
the walls were mere loophole slits, about four feet long but only a few
inches broad. There were enough of these to make the place light. By
their light I could see that there was no way of escape for me except
by the main door. I was almost despairing of escape from this prison of
mine, when I saw that the loft had a hayshoot, leading downwards. When
I saw it I fondly hoped that it led to some outer stable or cart-shed,
separated from that in which the carter slept. A glance down its smooth
shaft showed me that it led to the main stable. I could see the heads
of the meditative horses, bent over the empty mangers exactly as if they
were saying grace. Beyond them I saw the boots of the carter dangling
over the edge of the trusses of hay on which he slept. I stepped back
from this shaft quickly because I thought that I might be seen from
below. My foot went into the nest of a sitting hen, right on to the
creature's back. Up she started, giving me such a fright that I nearly
screamed. She flew with a cackling shriek which set all the blackbirds
chippering in the countryside. Round the loft she scattered, calling
her hideous noise. Up jumped the carter, down came his pitchfork with
a thud. His great boots clattered over the stable to the ladder. Clump,
clump, he came upstairs, with his pitchfork prongs gleaming over his
head like lanceheads. I saw his head show over the opening of the loft.
There was not a second to lose. His back of course was still towards me,
as the ladder was mercifully nailed to the wall. Before he turned I slid
over the mouth of the shaft down into the hayrack of the old brute who
had whinnied. I lit softly; but I certainly shocked that old mare's
feelings. In a second, before she had time to kick, I was outside her
stall, darting across the stable to the key, which lay on the truss of
hay, mercifully left there by its guardian. In another second the lock
had turned. I was outside, in the glorious open fields again. Swiftly
but silently I drew the key out of the lock. One second more sufficed
to lock that door from without. The carter was a prisoner there, locked
safely in with his horses. I was free. The key was in my pocket. Yonder
lay the great combes which hid Taunton from me. I waved my hat towards
them; then, with a wild joyous rush, I scrambled behind the cover of the
nearest hedge, along which I ran hard for nearly a quarter of a mile.

I stopped for a few minutes to rest among some ferns, while I debated
how to proceed. I changed the arrangement of my stockings; I also dusted
my very dirty clothes, all filthy from that horrid passage underground.
"Now," I said to myself, "there must be many ways to Taunton. One way,
I know, leads along this valley, past Chard there, where the houses are.
The other way must lie across these combes, high up. Which way shall I
choose, I wonder?" A moment's thought showed me that the combes would
be unfrequented, while the valley road, being the easy road, which (as I
knew) the Duke's army had chosen, would no doubt be full of people, some
of them (perhaps) the King's soldiers, coming up from Bridport. If I
went by that road my pursuers would soon hear of me, even if I managed
to get past the watchers on the road. On the other hand, Aurelia would
probably know that I should choose the combe road. Still, even if she
sent out mounted men, she would find me hard to track, since the combes
were lonely, so lonely that for hours together you can walk there
without meeting anybody. There would be plentiful cover among the combes
in case I wished to lie low. Besides, I had a famous start, a five
hours' start; for I should not be missed until eight o'clock. It could
not then have been much more than half-past two. In five hours an active
boy, even if he knew not the road, might put some half a dozen miles
behind him. I say only half a dozen miles, because the roads were the
roughest of rough mud-tracks, still soft from the rains. As I did not
know the way, I knew that I might count on going wrong, taking wrong
turns, etc. As I wished to avoid people, I counted on travelling most
of the way across country, trusting to luck to find my way among the
fields. So that, although in five hours I should travel perhaps ten or
twelve miles, I could not count on getting more than six miles towards
Taunton.

CHAPTER XXIII. FREE

For the first hour or two, as no one would be about so early, I thought
it safe to use the road. I put my best foot foremost, going up the great
steep combe, with Chard at my back.

The road was one of the loneliest I have ever trodden. It went winding
up among barren-looking combes which seemed little better than waste
land. There were few houses, so few that sometimes, on a bit of rising
ground, when the road lifted clear of the hedges, one had to look about
to see any dwelling of men. There was little cultivation, either. It was
nearly all waste, or scanty pasture. A few cows cropped by the wayside
near the lonely cottages. A few sheep wandered among the ferns. It was
a very desolate land to lie within so few miles of England's richest
valleys. I walked through it hurriedly, for I wished to get far from my
prison before my escape was discovered. No one was there to see me;
the lie of the valley below gave me my direction, roughly, but closely
enough. After about an hour of steady, fairly good walking, I pulled up
by a little tiny brook for breakfast. I ate quickly, then hurried on,
for I dared not waste time. I turned out of the narrow cart-tracks into
what seemed to be a highroad.

I dipped down a hollow, past a pond where geese were feeding, then
turned to a stiff steep hill, which never seemed to end for miles. The
country grew lonelier at every step; there were no houses there; only
a few rabbits tamely playing in the outskirts of the coverts. A jay
screamed in the clump of trees at the hill-top; it seemed the proper
kind of voice for a waste like that. Still further on, I sat down to
rest at the brink of the great descent, which led, as I guessed, as I
could almost see, to the plain where Taunton lay, waiting for the Duke's
army to garrison her. There were thick woods to my right at this point,
making cover so dense that no hounds would have tried to break through
it, no matter how strong a scent might lead them. It was here, as I sat
for a few minutes to rest, that a strange thing happened.

I was sitting at the moment with my back to the wood, looking over
the desolate country towards a tiny cottage far off on the side of the
combe. A big dog-fox came out of the cover from behind me, so quietly
that I did not hear him. He trotted past me in the road; I do not think
that he saw me till he was just opposite. Then he stopped to examine me,
as though he had never seen such a thing before. He was puzzled by me,
but he soon decided that I was not worth bothering about, for he made
no stay. He padded slowly on towards Chard, evidently well-pleased with
himself. Suddenly he stopped dead, with one pad lifted, a living image
of alert tension. He was alarmed by something coming along the road by
which I had come. He turned his head slightly, as though to make sure
with his best ear. Then with a single beautiful lollopping bound he
was over the hedge to safety, going in that exquisite curving rhythm of
movement which the fox has above all English animals. For a second, I
wondered what it was that had startled him. Then, with a quickness of
wit which would have done credit to an older mind, I realized that there
was danger coming on the road towards me, danger of men or of dogs,
since nothing else in this country frightens a fox. It flashed in upon
me that I must get out of sight at once; before that danger hove in view
of me. I gave a quick rush over the fence into the tangle, through which
I drove my way till I was snug in an open space under some yew trees,
surrounded on all sides by brambles. I shinned up one of the great yew
trees, till I could command a sight of the road, while lying hidden
myself in the profuse darkness of the foliage. Here I drew out my
pistol, ready for what might come. I suppose I had not been in my
hiding-place for more than thirty seconds, when over the brow of the
hill came Sir Travers Carew, at a full gallop, cheering on a couple of
hounds, who were hot on my scent. Aurelia rode after him, on her famous
chestnut mare. Behind her galloped two men, whom I had not seen before.
In an instant, they were swooped down to the place where the dog-fox had
passed. The hounds gave tongue when they smelt the rank scent of their
proper game; they were unused to boy-hunting. They did not hesitate an
instant, but swung off as wild as puppies over the hedge, after the fox.
The horsemen paused for a second, surprised at the sudden sharp turn;
but they followed the hounds' lead, popping over the fence most nimbly,
not waiting to look for my tracks in the banks of the hedge. They
streamed away after the fox, to whom I wished strong legs. I knew that
with two young hounds they would never catch him, but I hoped that he
would give them a good run before the sun killed the scent. I looked
at the sun, now gloriously bright over all the world, putting a bluish
glitter on to the shaking oak leaves of the wood. How came it that they
had discovered my flight so soon since it could not be more than six
o'clock, if as much? I wondered if it had been the old carter, who had
never really seen me. It might have been the old carter; but doubtless
he drummed for a good while on the door of the stable before anybody
heard him. Or it might have been one of the garden sentries. One of the
sentries might well have peeped in at the window of my room to make sure
that I was up to no pranks. He could have seen from the window that my
bed was empty. If he had noticed that, he could have unlocked my door to
make sure, after which it would not have taken more than a few minutes
to start after me. I learned afterwards that the sentry had alarmed the
house at a little before five o'clock. The carter, being only half-awake
when he came after me, suspected nothing till the other farm-hands came
for the horses, at about six o'clock, when, the key being gone, he had
to break the lock, vowing that the rattens had took his key from him in
the night. My disappearance puzzled everybody, because I had hidden my
tracks so carefully that no one noticed at first how the chimney bars
had been loosened. No one in that house knew of the secret room, so that
the general impression was that I had either squeezed myself through the
window, or blown myself out through the keyhole by art-magic. The hounds
had been laid along the road to Chard, with the result that they had hit
my trail after a few minutes of casting about.

Now that they were after me, I did not know what to do. I dared not
go on towards Taunton; for who knew how soon the squire would find his
error, by viewing the fox? He was too old a huntsman not to cast back
to where he had left the road, as soon as he learned that his hounds
had changed foxes. I concluded that I had better stay where I was,
throughout that day, carefully hidden in the yew-tree. In the evening
I might venture further if the coast seemed clear. It was easy to make
such a resolution; but not so easy to keep to it; for fifteen hours is a
long time for a boy to wait. I stayed quiet for some hours, but I heard
no more of my hunters. I learned later that they had gone from me, in
a wide circuit, to cut round upon the Taunton roads, so as to intercept
me, or to cause me to be intercepted in case I passed by those ways.
The hounds gave up after chasing the fox for three miles. The old squire
thought that they stopped because the sun had destroyed the scent. With
a little help from an animal I had beaten Aurelia once more. When I grew
weary of sitting up in the yew tree, clambered down, intending to push
on through the wood until I came to the end of it. It was mighty
thick cover to push through for the first half mile; then I came to a
cart-track, made by wood-cutters, which I followed till it took me out
of the wood into a wild kind of sheep-pasture. It was now fully nine
in the evening, but the country was so desolate it might have been
undiscovered land. I might have been its first settler, newly come there
from the seas. It taught me something of the terrors of war that day's
wandering towards Taunton. I realized all the men of these parts had
wandered away after the Duke, for the sake of the excitement, after
living lonely up there in the wilds. Their wives had followed the army
also. The while population (scanty as it was) had moved off to look for
something more stirring than had hitherto come to them. I wandered
on slowly, taking my time, getting my direction fairly clear from the
glimpses which I sometimes caught of the line of the highway. At a
little after noon I ate the last of my victuals near a spring. I rested
after my dinner, then pushed on again, till I had won to a little
spinney only four miles from Taunton, where my legs began to fail under
me.

I crept into the spinney, wondering if it contained some good shelter in
which I could sleep for the night. I found a sort of dry, high pitched
bank, with the grass all worn off it, which I thought would serve my
turn, if the rain held off. As for supper, I determined to shoot a
rabbit with my pistol. For drink, there was a plenty of small brooks
within half a mile of the little enclosure. After I had chosen my camp,
I was not very satisfied with it. The cover near by was none too thick.
So I moved off to another part where the bushes grew more closely
together. As I was walking leisurely along, I smelt a smell of something