I nodded, keeping my own counsel; but I had a shrewd notion that something else besides the arguments and persuasions of Mr. Hewling had prevailed to make a convert of the Viscount.
"LE ROI EST MORT."
"Dicon! Dicon! Come down, lad; come down! The whole town is beside itself, and we want thine eyes and thy tongue here. Get up and come down. Lose not a moment! Heaven help us all if the thing be true!"
I was roused from my sleep on a bright February morning by the hearty tones of my uncle's sonorous voice. I lost not a moment in springing up and hurrying into my clothes, for there was an urgency in his manner which betokened that something unwonted was afoot.
Truth to tell, I was later abed than was my wont, owing to having aided my Lord Vere to another stolen interview with Mistress Mary the previous evening, followed by a second stolen interview at Mr. Hewling's house, where some important letters had been read and discussed, and where Mr. Speke, from Ilminster, had attended, and had given an encouraging report of the state of public feeling in his part of the world.
It was now known all over the country, I suppose, that the King was grievously ill and like to die; albeit there were many who declared that he would be given back in answer to the prayers from the churches. I suppose all men who had any sort of love for their country or interest in public affairs felt grave anxiety just at this time. For there could be small doubt that it would go hard but that bloodshed of some kind there would be, were the Duke of York to succeed to the throne; and yet there seemed no other to take that place, seeing that the Duke of Monmouth was an exile, and that he would have to fight for the crown ere he could hope to wear it. Men who remembered the horrors of civil war a generation back, the disruption of families, and the bloodshed and confusion, shook their heads mournfully, and advised any submission rather than a repetition of such fearsome things; but we of younger and rasher spirit—we who had never tasted of such horrors, but looked only on the glory and honour to be reaped in warfare—felt very differently. I think I, despite my physical deformities, should have been grieved to the heart had any prophet arisen to say that there would be no fighting in our days. The martial spirit had seized upon me. I, in common with others, watched eagerly the marshalling and exercising of the train-bands and militia whenever they assembled under their leaders; and although we knew right well that they were thus mustered and put through their exercises with a view to showing the towns-folk how useless would be any rising of the rabble, when these bands could at once be brought out to crush it, yet knowing the individual men in the ranks, we were certain that half of them at least were hot in the cause of our Duke, and that if the chance for joining him arose, they would come over, arms, ammunition, bright-coloured uniforms, and all.
But I must return to that day when the great news reached Taunton. I rushed downstairs, finishing my toilet as I did so, to find all the lower rooms filled with excited folk who had come in from the streets the moment the news had got wind, and were so crowding round a travel-stained messenger that it was some time before I could approach near enough to hear what he was saying. But I did not need to do that to know what had happened, for the news was in every mouth,—