"Neighbors going home," answered Richard Penderell.

"If you be neighbors, stand, or I will knock you down," cried the
suspicious miller, reaching behind the door for his cudgel.

"Follow me," said Penderell, quietly, to the prince. "I fancy master
miller is not alone."

They ran swiftly along a lane and up a hill, opening a gate at the top
of it. The miller followed, yelling out, "Rogues! rogues! Come on, lads;
catch these runaways."

He was joined by several men who came from the mill, and a sharp chase
began along a deep and dirty lane, Charles and his guide running until
they were tired out. They had distanced their pursuers; no sound of
footsteps could be heard behind them.

"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 i