"Let us leap the hedge, and lie behind it to see if they are still on our track," said the prince.
This they did, and lay there for half an hour, listening intently for pursuers. Then, as it seemed evident that the miller and his men had given up the chase, they rose and walked on.
At a village near by lived an honest gentleman named Woolfe, who had hiding-places in his house for priests. Day was at hand, and travelling dangerous. Penderell proposed to go on and ask shelter from this person for an English gentleman who dared not travel by day.
"Go, but look that you do not betray my name," said the prince.
Penderell left his royal charge in a field, sheltered under a hedge beside a great tree, and sought Mr. Woolfe's house, to whose questions he replied that the person seeking shelter was a fugitive from the battle of Worcester.
"Then I cannot harbor him," was the good man's reply. "It is too dangerous a business. I will not venture my neck for any man, unless it be the king himself."
"Then you will for this man, for you have hit the mark; it is the king," replied the guide, quite forgetting the injunction given him.
"Bring him, then, in God's name," said Mr. Woolfe. "I will risk all I have to help him."
Charles was troubled when he heard the story of his loose-tongued guide. But there was no help for it now. The villager must be trusted. They sought Mr. Woolfe's house by the rear entrance, the prince receiving a warm but anxious welcome from the loyal old gentleman.
"I am sorry you are here, for the place is perilous," said the host. "There are two companies of militia in the village who keep a guard on the ferry, to stop any one from escaping that way. As for my hiding-places, they have all been discovered, and it is not safe to put you in any of them. I can offer you no shelter but in my barn, where you can lie behind the corn and hay."