I wasn't
certain. Down, Jack!"

The hound was barking madly again, having recognized an old friend.

"Plague on the dog!" growled Walters. "He'll wake Mr. Wilding."

"Mr. Wilding?" said Trenchard, and checked midway across the hall. "Mr.
Wilding?"

"He arrived here a couple of hours ago, sir..."

"Wilding here? Oddsheart! I was more than well advised to come. Where is
he, man?"

"Sh, sir! He's asleep in the library. You'll wake him, you'll wake him!"

But Trenchard never paused. He crossed the hall at a bound, and flung
wide the library door. "Anthony!" he shouted. "Anthony!" And in the
background Walters cursed him for a fool. Wilding leapt to his feet,
awake and startled.

"Wha... Nick!"

"Oons!" roared Nick. "You're choicely found. I came to send to
Bridgwater for you. We must away at once, man."

"How--away? I thought you were in the fight, Nick."

"And don't I look as if I had been?"

"But then..

"The fight is fought and lost; there's an end to the garboil. Monmouth
is in full flight with what's left him of his horse. When I quitted the
field, he was riding hard for Polden Hill." He dropped into a chair, his
accents grim and despairing, his eyes haggard.

"Lost?" gasped Wilding, and his conscience pricked him for a moment,
remembering how much it had been his fault--however indirectly--that
Feversham had been forewarned. "But how lost?" he cried a moment later.

"Ask Grey," snapped Trenchard. "Ask his craven, numskulled lordship. He
had as good a hand in losing it as any. Oh, it was all most infernally
mishandled, as has been everything in this ill-starred rising. Grey sent
back Godfrey, the guide, and attempted in the dark to find his own way
across the rhine. He missed the ford. What else could the fool have
hoped? And when he was discovered and Dunbarton's guns began to play on
us--hell and fire! we ran as if Sedgemoor had been a race-course.

"The rest was but the natural sequel. The foot, seeing our confusion,
broke. They were rallied again; broke again; and again were rallied; but
all too late. The enemy was up, and with that damned ditch between us
there was no getting to close quarters with them. Had Grey ridden round,
and sought to turn their flank, things might have been--O God!--they
would have been entirely different. I did suggest it. But for my pains
Grey threatened to pistol me if I presumed to instruct him in his duty.
I would to Heaven I had pistolled him where he stood."

Wa