them. It saved them all from arrest later in the same day.

Having bidden my hosts farewell, I wandered on, keeping pretty well in
cover. I saw a patrol of the King's dragoons in one of the roads near
which I walked. The nets were fast closing in on my master: there were
soldiers coming upon him from every quarter save the west, which was
blocked too, as it happened, by ships of war in the Channel. This
particular patrol of dragoons caught sight of me. I saw a soldier
looking over a gate at me; but as I was only a boy, seemingly out for
birdsnests, he did not challenge me, so that by noon I was safe in
Taunton. I have no clear memory of Taunton, except that it was full of
people, mostly women. There were little crowds in the streets, little
crowds of women, surrounding muddy, tired men who had come in from the
Duke. People were going about in a hurried, aimless way which showed
that they were scared. Many houses were shut up. Many men were working
on the city walls, trying to make the place defensible. If ever a town
had the fear of death upon it that town was Taunton, then. As far as I
could make out it was not the actual war that it feared; though that
it feared pretty strongly, as the looks on the women's faces showed. It
feared that the Duke's army would come back to camp there, to eat them
all up, every penny, every blade of corn, like an army of locusts.
Sometimes, while I was there, men galloped in with news, generally
false, like most warmews, but eagerly sought for by those who even now
saw their husbands shot dead in ranks by the fierce red-coats under
their drunken Dutch general. Sometimes the news was that the army was
pressing in to cut off the Duke from Taunton; that the dragoons were
shooting people on the road; that they were going to root out the whole
population without mercy. At another time news came that Monmouth was
marching in to music, determined to hold Taunton till the town was a
heap of cinders. Then one, bloody with his spurred horse's gore, cried
aloud that the King was dead, shot in the heart by one of his brother's
servants. Then another came calling all to prayer. All this uproar
caused a hurrying from one crowd to another. Here a man preached
fervently to a crowd of enthusiasts. Here men ran from a prayer-meeting
to crowd about a messenger. Bells jangled from the churches; the noise
of the picks never ceased in the trenches; the taverns were full; the
streets swarmed; the public places w