Mr. Blood knocked the ashes from his pipe, and drew back to close
his window. As he did so, his glance travelling straight across
the street met at last the glance of those hostile eyes that watched
him. There were two pairs, and they belonged to the Misses Pitt,
two amiable, sentimental maiden ladies who yielded to none in
Bridgewater in their worship of the handsome Monmouth.

Mr. Blood smiled and inclined his head, for he was on friendly terms
with these ladies, one of whom, indeed, had been for a little while
his patient. But there was no response to his greeting. Instead,
the eyes gave him back a stare of cold disdain. The smile on his
thin lips grew a little 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 training which might now be
valuable to the Cause, should stand aloof; that he should placidly
smoke his pipe and tend his geraniums on this evening of all
evenings, when men of spirit were rallying to the Protestant
Champion, offering their blood to place him on the throne where he
belonged.

If Mr. Blood had condescended to debate the matter with these ladies,
he might have urged that having had his fill of wandering and
adventuring, he was now embarked upon the career for which he had
been originally intended and for which his studies had equipped him;
that 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