forth on that Wednesday morning, with his
bonnie mistress behind him, on their double-
saddled charger, accompanied, after a similar
fashion, by the lady's brother-in-law and
sister, Mr. and Mistress Petre of
Buckinghamshire. These being attended, moreover,
by another relative, a royalist officer, named
Lascelles. Colonel Lane meanwhile canters
across the meadow fields skirting the
highway in company with Lord Wilmot.
Neither of them more elaborately disguised
than by carrying each a hawk upon the wrist
and a lure by the side; while, clustered at
their heels are two or three gay little yelping
spaniels. It is eminently characteristic of
that most refined voluptuary that-was-to-be,
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, that he resolutely
disdained any other disguise whatsoever;
protesting, that he would look frightful in it.
Nevertheless, during one brief interval of
their subsequent wanderings, his lordship, I
remember, condescends so far to a little
temporary masquerading as to assume the
patronymic of one Mr. Barlow. And a sufficiently
preposterous conjecture as to the Christian
name selected, at the same time, may very
naturally result from a recollection of the
invariable prefix of Will to the royal pseudonyms
of Jones, Jackson, and Ashburnham.

Rapidly following in the wake of the
fugitives, I observe throughout, with
increasing zest, the more notable incidents
chequering the progress of the young king's
adventures. I am at his elbow chuckling
inaudibly as he stands by the little
village forge in Warwickshire (his mare
having cast a shoe) and holds the hoof for
the garrulous smith, who gossips with him
as he files and hammers, about that rogue
Charles Stuart, protesting that the fellow
deserves hanging more than the rest for
bringing in the army from Scotland. Another
while I hearken again to that mysterious
warning-cry of the old beldame gleaming
among the barley stubble by Wotton—
"Master, don't you see a troop of horse
before you! "—just as I come clattering,
cheek-by-jowl with the king, through the
midst of a squadron of Republican cavalry
halting there to refresh their chargers by
letting them crop the grass by the wayside.
I am in the kitchen at Mr. Tombs's of
Long Marston, four miles beyond Stratford-
upon-Avon, when the cookmaid rails at my
liege for his awkwardness in fumbling over
the meat-jack; she having asked him to
lend a hand in winding, I tarry together
with Mistress Norton's maid, Margaret
Rider, by the bedside of stripling farmer
Jackson, while he leans there, propped
up on the bolster—pale with fatigue and
seemingly to my companion just recovered
from the ague—sipping the carduus posset
is brought him as a sudorific. I am
momentarily dismayed myself, upon the
very of the king by sagacious Mr. John
Pope, the butler at Abbotsleigh, though
speedily reassured, it is true, by the candid
fervour of his protestations ol faithfulness.

After a delightful night's repose at Mr.
Edward Barton's mansion of Castle Cary, near
Burton, I am exhilarated by a refreshing
gallop through the sweet morning air over to
Colonel Windham's house, at Trent. I peer
over the king's shoulder out of the window of
his hiding-place, there remarking with him
the boisterous assemblage in the churchyard
below us, where the Puritans are broaching
casks of ale and lighting bonfires tumultuously
in celebration of his supposed demise,
hearing him sigh to himself, as he turns from
the lattice, Alas, poor people! I am
startled hardly less than he himself, when the
ostler in the inn-yard at Bridport greets
him with, surely he has seen his face before,
the varlet actually then, in truth, trembling
upon the brink of recognition. Yet, more
startled am I, however, when another tavern-
groom (ostler at the inn at Charmouth)
taking my Lord Wilmot's horse round to the
neighbouring forge for the purpose of getting
a cast shoe replaced, has his suspicions
roused by that shrewd observation of the
keen-witted artisan, Hammit, the blacksmith,
"This horse has but three shoes, and they
were all set in different counties, and one in
Worcestershire."

I am still pertinaciously beside his
Majesty, when under the guidance of Colonel
Robin Philips, he carries behind him, on the
pillion, a new lady-mistress in the fair
Juliana Coningsby; and, when stopping to
dinner at the Mere, the presumed hobby-
groom is challenged by jovial Boniface with
the cavalier countersign, "Art thou a friend
of Caesar? " and answering as one might
conjecture, " Yea! " is pledged to his own
health roysteringly.

I pass the whole of one day of October upon
Salisbury Plain, in company with Charles
and Robin, entertaining ourselves, among
other idle amusements, with reckoning up the
colossal fragments of Stonehenge.

A week later, I am crossing those same
downs a-foot with his Majesty, attended by
burly Dr. Henchman, canon of Salisbury,
pursuing our way with pleasant converse
until we come by pre-arrangement upon a
little group of friends at Clarendon Park
Corner, there loitering about for us, with
greyhounds in leash, under pretext of being
out simply on a coursing expedition.

Finally, I am observantly entertained at
the little inn, still discoverable by the curious,
in the now most fashionable of all our
brilliant wateringplaces, then no more than
the small fisher-town of Brighthelmstone—
when vulgar-minded, honest-hearted landlord
Smith, passing behind the king, and
suddenly kissing his Majesty's hand, then resting
by accident on the back of a chair on which
he was leaning, whispers to his liege in a
fluster: " God bless thee wherever thou
goest! I doubt not before I die but to be a