ws 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 righ