six months later, when the battle of Sedgemoor was fought.

Deeming the impending action no affair of his, as indeed it was not,
and indifferent to the activity with which Bridgewater was that
night agog, Mr. Blood closed his ears to the sounds of it, and went
early to bed. He was peacefully asleep long before eleven 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 by the
greater steadiness of the regular troops on the other side - and
the advantages he derived from falling by surprise upon an army that
was more or less asleep, were all lost to him by blundering and bad
leadership before ever he was at grips with Feversham.

The armies came into collision in the neighbourhood of two o'clock
in the morning. Mr. Blood slept undisturbed through the distant
boom of cannon. Not until four o'clock, when the sun was rising to
dispel the last wisps of mist over that stricken field of battle,
did he awaken from his tranquil slumbers.

He sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and collected
himself. Blows were thundering upon the door of his house, and a
voice was calling incoherently. This 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
landing he almost collided with Mrs. Barlow, new-risen and unsightly,
in a state of panic. He quieted her cluckings with a word of
reassurance, and went himself to open.