" For this
the men thanked me humbly. I learned, too, that it was of service
to them. It saved them all from arrest later in the same day.
Having bidden my hosts farewell, I wandered on, keeping pretty
well in cover. I saw a patrol of the King's dragoons in one of
the roads near which I walked. The nets were fast closing in on
my master: there were soldiers coming upon him from every quarter
save the west, which was blocked too, as it happened, by ships of
war in the Channel. This particular patrol of dragoons caught
sight of me. I saw a soldier looking over a gate at me; but as I
was only a boy, seemingly out for birdsnests, he did not
challenge me, so that by noon I was safe in Taunton. I have no
clear memory of Taunton, except that it was full of people,
mostly women. There were little crowds in the streets, little
crowds of women, surrounding muddy, tired men who had come in
from the Duke. People were going about in a hurried, aimless way
which showed that they were scared. Many houses were shut up.
Many men were working on the city walls, trying to make the place
defensible. If ever a town had the fear of death upon it that
town was Taunton, then. As far as I could make out it was not the
actual war that it feared; though that it feared pretty strongly,
as the looks on the women's faces showed. It feared that the
Duke's army would come back to camp there, to eat them all up,
every penny, every blade of corn, like an army of locusts.
Sometimes, while I was there, men galloped in with news,
generally false, like most warmews, but eagerly sought for by
those who even now saw their husbands shot dead in ranks by the
fierce red-coats under their drunken Dutch general.
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