kept for the King three months and a week; rumours of disturbances, of
plottings, and of outbreak began to stir among us. We heard of fighting
in Scotland, and buying of ships on the continent, and of arms in Dorset
and Somerset; and we kept our beacon in readiness to give signals of a
landing; or rather the soldiers did. For we, having trustworthy reports
that the King had been to high mass himself in the Abbey of Westminster,
making all the bishops go with him, and all the guards in London, and
then tortured all the Protestants who dared to wait outside, moreover
had received from the Pope a flower grown in the Virgin Mary's garden,
and warranted to last for ever, we of the moderate party, hearing all
this and ten times as much, and having no love for this sour James,
such as we had for the lively Charles, were ready to wait for what might
happen, rather than care about stopping it. Therefore we listened to
rumours gladly, and shook our heads with gravity, and predicted, every
man something, but scarce any two the same. Nevertheless, in our part,
things went on as usual, until the middle of June was nigh. We ploughed
the ground, and sowed the corn, and tended the cattle, and heeded every
one his neighbour's business, as carefully as heretofore; and the only
thing that moved us much was that Annie had a baby. This being a very
fine child with blue eyes, and christened 'John' in compliment to me,
and with me for his godfather, it is natural to suppose that I thought
a good deal about him; and when mother or Lizzie would ask me, all of a
sudden, and treacherously, when the fire flared up at supper-time (for
we always kept a little wood just alight in summer-time, and enough to
make the pot boil), then when they would say to me, 'John, what are
you thinking of? At a word, speak!' I would always answer, 'Little John
Faggus'; and so they made no more of me.

But when I was down, on Saturday the thirteenth of June, at the
blacksmith's forge by Brendon town, where the Lynn-stream runs so close
that he dips his horseshoes in it, and where the news is apt to come
first of all to our neighbourhood (except upon a Sunday), while we were
talking of the hay-crop, and of a great sheep-stealer, round the corner
came a man upon a piebald horse looking flagged and weary. But seeing
half a dozen of us, young, and brisk, and hearty, he made a flourish
with his horse, and waved a blue flag vehemently, shouting with great
glory,--

'Monmou