e difference which
discipline and training make. These brave lads seem high of heart. What
think you of the enemy's dispositions, Colonel Saxon?'

'By my faith, I think very little of them, your Majesty,' Saxon answered
bluntly. 'I have seen armies drawn up in array in many different parts
of the world and under many commanders. I have likewise read the section
which treats of the matter in the "De re militari" of Petrinus Bellus,
and in the works of a Fleming of repute, yet I have neither seen nor
heard anything which can commend the arrangements which we see before
us.'

'How call you the hamlet on the left--that with the square ivy-clad
church tower?' asked Monmouth, turning to the Mayor of Bridgewater,
a small, anxious-faced man, who was evidently far from easy at the
prominence which his office had brought upon him.

'Westonzoyland, your Honour--that is, your Grace--I mean, your Majesty,'
he stammered. 'The other, two miles farther off, is Middlezoy, and away
to the left, just on the far side of the rhine, is Chedzoy.'

'The rhine, sir! What do you mean?' asked the King, starting violently,
and turning so fiercely upon the timid burgher, that he lost the little
balance of wits which was left to him.

'Why, the rhine, your Grace, your Majesty,' he quavered. 'The rhine,
which, as your Majesty's Grace cannot but perceive, is what the country
folk call the rhine.'

'It is a name, your Majesty, for the deep and broad ditches which drain
off the water from the great morass of Sedgemoor,' said Sir Stephen
Timewell.

Monmouth turned white to his very lips, and several of the council
exchanged significant glances, recalling the strange prophetic jingle
which I had been the means of bringing to the camp. The silence was
broken, however, by an old Cromwellian Major named Hollis, who had been
drawing upon paper the position of the villages in which the enemy was
quartered.

'If it please your Majesty, there is something in their order which
recalls to my mind that of the army of the Scots upon the occasion
of the battle of Dunbar. Cromwell lay in Dunbar even as we lie in
Bridgewater. The ground around, which was boggy and treacherous, was
held by the enemy. There was not a man in the army who would not own
that, had old Leslie held his position, we should, as far as human
wisdom could see, have had to betake us to our ships, leave our stores
and ordnance, and so make the best of our way to Newcastle. He moved,
howev