all sorts of questions, to which we answered at random. In the
light summer night we had a fair view of things. When we dismounted to
lead our horses up or down the steep hills of that road, the straggling
sight-seers came all round us as we walked, to hear what we had to tell.
We could see their faces all about us, strange in the dusk, like ghosts,
not like real men. At the top of one hill, Mr. Blick warned them to look
out for themselves. He told them that before morning the highway would
be patrolled by troops who would take them in charge as suspicious
characters trying to join Monmouth, which actually happened the next day
when the militia officers realized that war had begun. His words scared
off a number of them; but many kept on as they were going, to see the
great battle, which, they said, would begin as soon as it was light.

When the sun began to peep, we turned off the highway in order to avoid
Bridport, which we passed a little after dawn. A few miles further on
we felt that we could turn into the road again as we were safe from
the militia at that distance. Then, feeling happy at the thought of
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