s. There are six thousand men of a sort in the camp, but
not one in five carries a musket. They have advanced, I hear, upon
Axminster, where they must meet the Duke of Albemarle, who hath set out
from Exeter with four thousand of the train bands.'

'Then we shall be too late, after all,' I exclaimed.

'You will have enough of battles before Monmouth exchanges his
riding-hat for a crown, and his laced roquelaure for the royal purple,'
quoth Saxon. 'Should our worthy friend here be correctly informed and
such an engagement take place, it will but be the prologue to the play.
When Feversham and Churchill come up with the King's own troops, it is
then that Monmouth takes the last spring, that lands him either on the
throne or the scaffold.'

Whilst this conversation had been proceeding we had been walking our
horses down the winding track which leads along the eastern slope of
Taunton Deane. For some time past we had been able to see in the valley
beneath us the lights of Taunton town and the long silver strip of
the river Tone. The moon was shining brightly in a cloudless heaven,
throwing a still and peaceful radiance over the fairest and richest of
English valleys. Lordly manorial houses, pinnacled towers, clusters of
nestling thatch-roofed cottages, broad silent stretches of cornland,
dark groves with the glint of lamp-lit windows shining from their
recesses--it all lay around us like the shadowy, voiceless landscapes
which stretch before us in our dreams. So calm and so beautiful was the
scene that we reined up our horses at the bend of the pathway, the tired
and footsore peasants came to a halt, while even the wounded raised
themselves in the waggon in order to feast their eyes upon this land of
promise. Suddenly, in the stillness, a strong fervent voice was heard
calling upon the source of all life to guard and preserve that which
He had created. It was Joshua Pettigrue, who had flung himself upon his
knees, and who, while asking for future guidance, was returning thanks
for the safe deliverance which his flock had experienced from the many
perils which had beset them upon their journey. I would, my children,
that I had one of those magic crystals of which we have read, that I
might show you that scene. The dark figures of the horsemen, the grave,
earnest bearing of the rustics as they knelt in prayer or leaned upon
their rude weapons, the half-cowed, half-sneering expression of the
captive dragoons, the line of whi