"What have we here?" A couple of troopers had lifted the trap and discovered the passage.
"It is choked," said the captain. "What is that? An old cradle thrust away there? 'Fore heaven! he can't have got off that way, the cradle stops the way. The bird had flown before we came up the hill."
CHAPTER LVII. ANOTHER PARTING.
Immediately after Sedgemoor, a small detachment had been sent under Captain Fogg to Tavistock from the Royal Army to seek out and arrest, and deal summarily with, such volunteers as had joined the rebels from thence. Not only so, but the officer was enjoined to do his utmost to obtain evidence as to what gentlemen were disaffected to the King in that district; and to discover how far they were compromised in the attempt of Monmouth. Mr. Crymes's papers had been secured in his coach. They contained correspondence, but, for the most part, letters of excuse and evasion of his attempt to draw other men of position into the rebellion. With the letters were lists of the volunteers, and names of those who, it was thought, might be induced later to join the movement.
There existed in the mind of James and his advisers a suspicion that the Earl of Bedford, angry at the judicial murder of his son, was a favourer of Monmouth, and Captain Fogg was particularly ordered to find out, if such existed, proofs of his complicity.
The part Anthony had taken was too well known for him to remain neglected; and Fogg had been enjoined to seize and make short work of him.
Between two of the tors or granite crags that tower above the gorge of the Tavy where it bursts from the moor, at the place called The Cleave, are to be seen at the present day the massive remains of an oblong structure connecting the rocks, and forming a parallelogram. This was standing unruined at the time of our story. For whatever purpose it may have served originally, it had eventually been converted into a shelter-hut for cattle and for shepherds.
There was a doorway, and there were narrow loophole windows; the roof was of turf. At one end, against the rock, a rude fireplace had been constructed; but there was no proper chimney—the smoke had to find its way as best it might out of a hole in the roof above, which also admitted some light and a good deal of rain. A huge castle of rock in horizontal slabs walled off the hut from the north, and gave it some shelter from the storms that blew thence. There was a door to the opening that could be fastened, which was well, as it faced the southwest, whence blew the prevailing wind laden with rain; but the windows were unglazed—they were mere slots, through which the wind entered freely. The floor was littered with bracken, and was dry. The crushed fern exhaled a pleasant odour.
Outside the hut, in early morning, sat Anthony with Urith among the rocks, looking down into the gorge. The valley was full of white mist, out of which occasionally a grey rock thrust its head. Above the mist the moor-peaks and rounded hills glittered in the morning sun.