road, and had a hasty interview with his sisters. His young brothers were out, trying to gather news while they could; for the farmer had announced that if any soldiers should pass that way, he should probably close his gates and his shutters, and keep all within doors. He could at any time stand a short siege, if necessary; and he intended to defend his guests from any sort of intrusion. They came to him to be safe; and safe he would keep them, together with his own children. The boys might go anywhere within sound of his dinner-horn, with which the labourers were called to meals. At the first blast they must run for the farm, or take the chance of being shut out. Such was farmhouse life in those days.
Christopher could not stay, after telling his news, and assuring his sisters that he did not know where he was going, beyond overtaking Monmouth.
“But you say it is westwards that he is gone. Do you think he will go to Taunton?”
“O yes; to Taunton and everywhere else, sooner or later.”
“But how soon to Taunton? O! will you not Can you not bring Joanna home? And will you not go to Wells, and see how Madame Lisle fares, or whether she is gone back to Winchester?”
“And will you not?”
“My dears, I am a soldier now, and belong to my general,” he declared gaily, as he kissed his sisters, and rode away. He checked his horse for a moment, to call out to them that he would not fail to send news of Joanna, after getting to Taunton, unless he sent Joanna herself.
“He is in great spirits,” Arabella observed to her sister, as they stood at the farmyard gate, watching their idol as he galloped away over the Down.
“He is of that quality of man,” replied Judith, “that is lightest under the heaviest burdens. Would we were all of that temper!”
“Elizabeth is,” remarked Arabella; and Judith hoped this was true.
Christopher had special cause for his joyousness this morning. He had overheard his father remark to his mother on the courage that had so unexpectedly appeared in Elizabeth. From such a rearing as hers he should have looked, the Squire said, for a worldling who would shrink from the risks of a Roundhead marriage, when they came to be understood; instead of which, this delicately-reared young creature was the foremost to propose sacrifices, and gayer in the prospect of the gravest perils than in the safest and sunniest hours of maidenly merriment. There must be some strong support for some members of other churches than the Presbyterian:—(he had always believed this; but now he saw it). There must be some holy calling forth of the best faculties “Even so,” his wife had replied. “I trust Elizabeth has religion. Indeed, I cannot doubt it: but it is human love which enables her to be what we have seen.” These words, ringing through him in his mother’s voice, were the cause of Christopher’s exaltation of mind and spirits to-day.
Wherever he went, and wherever his family turned, the very air seemed burdened with tidings. News seemed to come in all directions faster than natural means could bring it. It was reported all along Elizabeth’s road to Dorchester, and all over Lyme, that the King and Council and Parliament had gone great lengths on the sole testimony of the mayor of Lyme, having actually passed, in the course of the day after his arrival in London, and without detaining him from his duty, a bill of attainder against Monmouth; and a bill which declared it high treason to call him legitimate. This was true; but it had not taken place when Christopher left London; nor had the mayor,—his acquaintance, Gregory Alford,—arrived in town. It was by Reuben that Christopher had been informed that Monmouth and his force were certainly off Lyme, or in it: and now, after one night-halt at his father’s, this news,—that in believing in and adhering to Monmouth men became guilty by law of high treason,—overtook him, outstripped him, and spread through the western counties before he could reach them.
It was said that, on the one hand the Duke had few supporters among the best class in the kingdom,—the substantial Whigs, the gentry in town and country, the magistrates and professional men, who had been supposed to be waiting only for an opportunity to set up a Protestant sovereign; while, on the other hand, there was no end of the reports of the rejoicings of the country people, and the town shopkeepers and working men and women, that the sacredness of the year was made manifest by the descent upon their shores of King Monmouth. Great folks said the rising was contemptible, and would be put down without disturbing quiet people: yet it was certain that the church bells were ringing wherever townsmen and villagers could get at them; there were to be bonfires all along the coast, and throughout the west that night: the hedges were torn to pieces, partly for timber for the fires, but also for the wild roses and woodbine, with which the people crowned effigies of King Monmouth, and adorned the triumphal arches which rapidly arose in his honour. Some said the Papists were packing up, in readiness for departure at any moment: but in each particular place there seemed to be nothing remarkable about the Catholics, unless it was a sudden quietness which seemed to have descended upon them. The prelatical party was a stranger spectacle, in its striking division on this first application of a test. A considerable proportion of the Church party, from London to Exeter, at once took up the cry for a Protestant King; but a great majority declared for the actual king and a regular succession, and showed a more bitter hostility to the rising than the Papists themselves. It was reported, till it reached Monmouth’s ear and sank his heart, that this violence was no sign of loyalty to James, but rather of impatience and wrath that an interloper should have ventured to cross their plans for a regular and safe Protestant succession, after a few years’ patience with the old man to whom they had sworn faith and loyalty, and who certainly was likely to try their patience to a very great extent. While, of thinking people, some were sunk in despair or quivering in fear,