militia to stand, whilst Lord Stawell's regiment were all fled
and mostly gone over to the rebels at Bridgwater.

This was grave news, but it was followed in a few days by graver. The
affair at Philips Norton was exaggerated by report into a wholesale
defeat of the loyal army, and it was reported--on, apparently, such good
authority that it received credence in quarters that might have waited
for official news--that the Duke of Albemarle had been slain by the
militia which had mutinied and deserted to Monmouth.

It was while this news was going round that Sunderland--in a moment of
panic--at last vouchsafed an answer to Mr. Wilding's letters, and he
vouchsafed it in person, just as Wilding--particularly since Disney's
arrest--was beginning to lose all hope. He came one evening to Mr.
Wilding's lodgings in Covent Garden, unattended and closely muffled, and
he remained closeted with the Duke's ambassador for nigh upon an hour,
at the end of which he entrusted Mr. Wilding with a letter for the Duke,
very brief but entirely to the point, which expressed him Monmouth's
most devoted servant.

"You may well judge, sir," he had said at parting, "that this is not
such a letter as I should entrust to any man."

Mr. Wilding had bowed gravely, and gravely he had expressed himself
sensible of the exceptional honour his lordship did him by such a trust.

"And I depend upon you, sir, as you are a man of honour, to take such
measures as will ensure against its falling into any but the hands for
which it is intended."

"As I am a man of honour, you may depend upon me," Mr. Wilding solemnly
promised. "Will your lordship give me three lines above your signature
that will save me from molestation; thus you will facilitate the
preservation of this letter."

"I had already thought of that," was Sunderland's answer, and he placed
before Mr. Wilding three lines of writing signed and sealed which
enjoined all, straitly, in the King's name to suffer the bearer to pass
and repass and to offer him no hindrance.

On that they shook hands and parted, Sunderland to return to Whitehall
and his obedience to the King James whom he was ready to betray as
soon as he saw profit for himself in the act, Mr. Wilding to return to
Somerset to the King James in whom his faith was scant, indeed, but with
whom his fortunes were irrevocably bound up.

Meanwhile, Monmouth was back in Bridgwater, his second occupation
of which town was not being looked upon