glorious a prince thus eclipsed, and not pay
unto him the tribute of tears?"

He is led out by a back-door, about a mile
in the grey dawn into a little adjacent wood
called Spring Coppice, by those brave-hearted
wood-cutters, the Penderells, armed with
unsightly bill-hooks. Thomas Penderell—
dead, fighting valorously for King Charles
the First either at Stowe or Edgehill—had
left five brothers. George had opened the
door to the royal party on their approach to
White Ladies, being a servant in that household.
Humphrey, the miller, ground his
corn at the old windmill in the immediate
neighbourhood. John shines out upon us
conspicuously among the whole fraternity as
the one reputed to have taken the most
trouble in behalf of the king, according to
the account furnished to us by the faithful
pen of Father Huddlestone. Richard,
surnamed Trusty Dick whenever he chanced to
be spoken of afterwards, kept house with
his aged mother, old Dame Joan, at Hobbal
Grange. William Penderell, as tenant of the
Giffard family, residing, with his wife, young
Dame Joan, in the old weather-beaten house
of Boscobel. The king, as dirty Will
Jones, was conducted by the two latter
Penderells into Spring Coppice about
sun-rising on that lamentable Thursday—
"and," saith Master Blount, "the heavens
wept bitterly at these calamities." There it
was that, seated in the drenching rain under
the shelter of a tree, upon an old blanket,
the king devoured the mess of buttermilk
got ready for him in the adjoining cottage of
Francis Yates (brother-in-law of the Pen-
derells) at Loughtow—the sole refreshment
the luckless Charles had tasted since his
flight from Worcester, save a crust and a cup
of canary, snatched during a momentary halt
at a little tavern on the outskirts of the
borough of Stourbridge.

Following the king at the close of that dis-
heartening first day of drizzling and mizzling,
I cross with him the threshold of Trusty
Dick's abode at Hobbal Grange, a little after
nightfall. There Will Jones having heartily
quaffed a tankard of ale and devoured a
morsel of coarse bread, we start with him upon
his first expedition: bent upon crossing
the river Severn, by means of a ferry-boat,
somewhere about Madeley, a village situated
half-way between Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury;
hoping thereby to escape into Wales,
and so at some early opportunity away on
ship-board for the Continent. At Evelin Mill
where, unknown of course to ourselves, a
party of cavalier fugitives are secretly
carousing—forth comes the dusty miller, bawling
valiantly into the darkness:

"Who goes there?"

The challenge is altogether too much for
us. Another minute, and we are scampering
down the nearest turning, a miry byeway,
the very Slough of Despond, where we
flounder on distractedly over a veritable
quagmire of ruts, until we pause at last,
panting with chagrin and exhaustion: Will
Jones, seating himself wearily under the
hedgerow, declares he can go no further.
Passing onward, however, in our dreary
night-march, we creep at last by a back way
into the house of one, Mr. Francis Woolfe,
a respectable old cavalier gentleman of
Madeley; who, through fear of his residence
being searched by the Puritan militia—two
companies of whom, chance to be quartered
upon the inhabitants of the locality—finds
himself constrained to lodge his sovereign in
a cosy barn. There we watch throughout
the whole day following—Friday, the fifth of
September—during which Jones luxuriously
reposes his aching limbs upon a litter of straw
behind the corn-sacks and hay-bundles,
sheltering him from casual observation. Evening
returned, we—on finding bridges and boats
upon the Severn alike exclusively in the
command of the Republicans—retrace our
miserable footprints, again under Trusty
Dick's guidance. Cunning-handed Mistress
Woolfe previously applying, it should be
observed, the finishing artistic touch to
the general degradation of the king's appearance,
by staining his face and hands of a
reeky colour, with the juice of walnut-leaves,
rendering his Majesty independent from
that time forth of mere soot-marks, by
imparting to him the acceptable mask of a
permanently tawny complexion. Through a
wholesome dread of the terrible miller of
Evelin, we ford, at a convenient distance, the
stream that turns his mill-wheel; Charles,
by reason of his being the most adroit
swimmer, acting as pioneer. At John
Ponderell's cottage, where Richard looks in
for a moment in passing, unexpected news
is learnt, putting an end to yet another
of the king's projected enterprises: the
design by which his Majesty and Lord Wilmot
had mutually proposed to journey by
separate ways to London, there to meet at the
Three Cranes in the Vintry, each asking for
the other by the name of Will Ashburnham.
It appearing, moreover, that my lord has
happily found a secure asylum at Moseley
Hall, Charles determines to delay no longer
iu pressing onward to the sheltering bocage
of Boscobel, the place of his original destination.
Moseley Hall being but eight miles
from Boscobel: William Careless, also, the
Hero of Worcester, deeming his own
paternal home of Brom Hall, in the vicinity,
somewhat unsafe, has taken to the leafy
covert about Boscobel with the resolution of
a bold freebooter. Companioned still by his
trusty henchman and my ghostly self, Charles
hurriedly completes that dismal trudge of
seven miles from Madeley—reaching the
immediate neighbourhood of William Penderell's
dwelling at the Great House, about five
o'clock on the morning of the sixth, being
Saturday. Leaving his Majesty outside,
Richard cautiously enters his brother's