with unmixed favour. The
inhabitants had suffered enough already from his first visit; his return
there, after the Philips Norton affair of which such grossly exaggerated
reports had reached London, and which, in point of fact, had been little
better than a drawn battle--had been looked upon with dread by some,
with disfavour by others, and with dismay by not a few who viewed in
this an augury of failure.

Now Sir Rowland Blake, who since his pursuit of Mr. Wilding and
Trenchard on the occasion of their flight from Taunton had--in spite
of his failure on that occasion--been more or less in the service of
Albemarle and the loyal army, saw in this indisposition towards Monmouth
of so many of Bridgwater's inhabitants great possibilities of profit to
himself.

He was at Lupton House, the guest of his friend Richard Westmacott, and
the open suitor of Ruth, entirely ignoring the circumstance that she was
nominally the wife of Mr. Wilding--this to the infinite chagrin of Miss
Horton, who saw all her scheming likely to go for nothing.

In his heart of hearts it was a matter of not the slightest consequence
to Sir Rowland whether James Stuart or James Scott occupied the throne
of England. His own affairs gave him more than enough to think of, and
these disturbances in the West were very welcome to him, since they
rendered difficult any attempt to trace him on the part of his London
creditors. It happens, however, very commonly that enmity to an
individual will lead to enmity to the cause which that individual
espouses. Thus may it have been with Sir Rowland. His hatred of Wilding
and his keen desire to see Wilding destroyed had made him a zealous
partisan of the loyal cause. Richard Westmacott, easily swayed and
overborne by the town rake, whose vices made him seem to Richard the
embodiment of all that is splendid and enviable in man, had become
practically the baronet's tool, now that he had abandoned Monmouth's
Cause. Sir Rowland had not considered it beneath the dignity of his name
and station to discharge in Bridgwater certain functions that made him
more or less a spy. And so reliable had been the information he had sent
Feversham and Albemarle during Monmouth's first occupation of the town,
that he had won by now their complete confidence.

The second occupation and its unpopularity with many of those who
earlier--if lukewarm--had been partisans of the Duke, swelled the number
of loyally inclined people in Bridgwater,