Captain Blood

sides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the si

his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle

clubs, and most of them trailed the mammoth pikes fashioned out of scythes, as formidable to the eye as they were clumsy to the hand. There were weavers, brewers, carpenters, smiths, masons, bricklayers, cobblers, and representatives of every other of the trades o

n it suited him, tended his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening as indifferently as if nothing were afoot. One other thin

, scelest

would have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very midst of turbulence. You realize how he regarded these men who were rallying to the banners of liberty-the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the girls from the seminaries of Miss Blake and Mrs. Musgrove,

clamation posted at the Cross at Bridgewater-as it had been posted also at Taunton and elsewhere-setting forth that "upon the decease of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second, the right of succession to the Crown of England, Scotland, Fr

t "James Duke of York did first cause the said late King to be po

story current there of the fellow's real paternity. Far from being legitimate-by virtue of a pretended secret marriage between Charles Stuart and Lucy Walter-it was possible that this Monmouth who now proclaimed himself King of England was not even the illegitimate child of the late sovereign

, scelest

p going forth to the shambles-escorted to the rallying ground on Castle Field by wives and daughters, sweethearts and mothers, sustained by the delusion that they were to take the field in defence of Right, of Liberty, and of Religion. For he knew, as all Bridgewater knew and had known now for some hours, that it was Monmouth's intention to deliver battle that

oss the street met at last the glance of those hostile eyes that watched him. There were two pairs, and they belonged to the M

e broader, a little less pleasant. He understood the reason of that hostility, which had been daily growing in this past week since Monmouth had come to turn the brains of women of all ages. The Misses Pitt, he apprehended, contemned him that he, a young and vigorous man, of a military tr

he was a man of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer. But they would have answered him, he knew, that in such a cause it behoved every man who deemed himself a man to take up arms. They would have pointed out that their own nephew Jeremiah, who was by trade a s

lighted room, and the table on which Mrs. Barlow, his housekeeper, was in th

am with the vinegary

are, swarthy of tint as a gipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark face and under those level black brows. In their glance those eyes, flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration and of a steady haughtiness that went well with his firm lips. Though dressed in black as became his calling, yet it was with an

him some six months ago; how long he would continue to pursue the trade for which he had qualified himself before he had begun to live. Difficult of belief though it may be when you know his history, previous and subsequent, yet

od, being quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae at Trinity College, Dublin. His father survived that satisfaction by three months only. His mother had then been dead some years already. Thus Peter Blood came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds, with which he had set out to see the world and give

in their warring upon the Spanish Netherlands. Having reached, at last, the age of thirty-two, his appetite for adventure surfeited, his health having grown indifferent as the result of a neglected wound, he was suddenly overwhelmed by homesickness. He took ship from Na

ossessor of a fortune that was approximately the same as that w

d that he had passed through adventures enough for a man's lifetime, he determined to settle there,

matters up to that night, six months late

o'clock, at which hour, as you know, Monmouth rode but with his rebel host along the Bristol Road, circuitously to avoid the marshland that lay directly between himself and the Royal Army. You also know that his numerical advantage-possibly counter-balanced b

disturbed through the distant boom of cannon. Not until four o'clock, when the sun was rising to disp

s was the noise that had aroused him. Conceiving that he had to do with some urgent obstetrical case, he reached for bedgown and slippers, to go below. On the landi

ing horse. Smothered in dust and grime, his clothes in disarray, the left sleeve of his doublet h

ne who had been drawn by the general enthusiasm into the vortex of that rebellion. The street was rousing, awakened by the s

d Mr. Blood. "I never knew

o the admonition. He plunged, headlo

at Oglethorpe's Farm by the river. I bore him thither..

m forth by force in bedgown and slippers as he

eager enough to do what he now could to discharge the debt, grieved that the occasion should have arisen, and in such a manner-for he knew quite well that the r

no time

'll go quickest by going leisurely. Come in... ta

aved aside t

s name." Mr. Blood went off to dress

ey were on their way. Whilst he pulled on his boots, he gave Mrs. Barlow instruct

othered in a crowd of scared, half-dressed townsfolk-mostly women-who had come hastening for news of how the bat

ssenger disengaged himself from those who pressed about, shook off his weariness and the two tea

r," he cried. "

us, upon the crupper of that doubly-laden horse, clinging to the belt of his companion, Peter Blood set out upon his Odyssey. F