CHAPTER IV.
THE MAIDS OF TAUNTON (CONTINUED).
The next day we watched the Duke of Monmouth's troops march out of Taunton on their way to Bridgewater. File after file of soldiers passed under our eyes, and yet there were more behind.
'"Thousands and thousands of them!" Camilla Fanshawe said, with a look of awe. "How can anybody doubt that the Duke will get back his rights, and win the crown which belonged to him, with such an army as that to fight his battles?"
'And yet we all agreed that its leader looked very melancholy. Though "Long live King Monmouth!" was echoing all down the street as he passed, he did not smile, but merely bowed mechanically, without caring to glance up at the faces which filled every window and balcony on both sides of the way.
'"Why does he look like that?" said Camilla, quite disappointed, like the rest of us, at the change which had come over the Duke since yesterday.
'"Perhaps he is sorry to leave Taunton," suggested Agnes. "You know every one seems to like him so much here, and maybe they will not in other places."
'"Perhaps he is thinking how many of the men who are marching with him now may never come back to Taunton," said Eleanor Page gravely.
'Henrietta sighed, and turned away from the window; and though the rest of us stayed there till the last strain of music died away in the distance, and the last straggler of the rabble who followed the army had vanished from our sight, yet it was with very sober faces that we gazed, for this was the first time that we really began to think what must be some of the consequences of the scene we had witnessed yesterday.
'"Will they fight a battle, and all be killed?" asked Lucy Fordyce anxiously.
'Nobody answered. But I am sure that we were all thinking the same thing, and were wondering how long it would be before we should hear news of the men who had just marched away from before our eyes, leaving the streets of Taunton to look duller and emptier than they had ever done before.