They have advanced, I hear, upon Axminster, where they must meet the Duke of Albemarle, who hath set out from Exeter with four thousand of the train bands.' 'Then we shall be too late, after all,' I exclaimed.
'You will have enough of battles before Monmouth exchanges his riding-hat for a crown, and his laced roquelaure for the royal purple,' quoth Saxon.

'Should our worthy friend here be correctly informed and such an engagement take place, it will but be the prologue to the play.
When Feversham and Churchill come up with the King's own troops, it is then that Monmouth takes the last spring, that lands him either on the throne or the scaffold.' Whilst this conversation had been proceeding we had been walking our horses down the winding track which leads along the eastern slope of Taunton Deane.

For some time past we had been able to see in the valley beneath us the lights of Taunton town and the long silver strip of the river Tone.

The moon was shining brightly in a cloudless heaven, throwing a still and peaceful radiance over the fairest and richest of English valleys.

Lordly manorial houses, pinnacled towers, clusters of nestling thatch-roofed cottages, broad silent stretches of cornland, dark groves with the glint of lamp-lit windows shining from their recesses--it all lay around us like the shadowy, voiceless landscapes which stretch before us in our dreams.