HE battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost. Night had come again, and in the old grey church of Weston Zoyland five hundred of the beaten rebels lay imprisoned.
The scene inside the church was awful in its weird impressiveness. It might have been a gorge of the lost souls in the Inferno. The lurid glare of a few torches which were stuck at intervals against the pillars revealed the forms of men sitting and lying on the seats and floor in every attitude of dejection and despair. Up and down the aisles the iron-shod heels of the sentries rang upon the pavement. The greater part of the prisoners were silent, or only moaning with the pain of recent wounds; some were praying; one was raving, mad with terror. And, in truth, he and his companions had good cause for fear, for their conqueror was Feversham, the general of the Royalists, whose only mode of dealing with a rebel was to hang or shoot him without more ado, and who was only waiting for the daybreak to begin the work of slaughter. A few only kept their resolution—among them two who were sitting together in the shadow of the pulpit steps. Both these men had been conspicuous in the fight, and both knew well that they must die at daybreak.
The elder of the two was a man of about thirty-five, with powerful thick-set frame, and strong and rugged features; a bad man to have against one, one might say. He was by trade a horse-breaker, and a great part of his business was to break in the wild colts of the marsh. His companion was some six or eight years younger. His figure was tall and slight, but finely made, and his face was singularly handsome. He was the swiftest runner in the West of England, perhaps in the whole kingdom. His name was David Dare: that of the elder man was John Quixarvyn. Both were natives of the town of Axbridge, but, until the day before, they had been strangers to each other. Chance had made them comrades in the contest, where they had fought side by side, and where the same troop of Royalists had seized them both.
The two were silent. Quixarvyn had pulled out a short black pipe, had filled and lighted it, and was now smoking tranquilly. His companion had also pulled out something from his breast—but it was not a pipe; it was the portrait of a beautiful young girl. He took a long look at the lovely face—a look which said farewell.
Quixarvyn watched him. In the dim light in which they sat, he could not see the features of the portrait, but he guessed how the case stood.
"Poor fellow!" he said, with more tenderness than would have been expected from his looks. Then, after a minute's silence, he went on, as much to himself as to the other, "And yet my case is harder. I was in love—I am in love, God help me!—and I also have her portrait in my breast. What would I give if I could look on it as you can look on yours!"
Dare looked at him with interest.
"What!" he said, "have you also the same trouble—a poor girl who will go dis-
