flight, which had a crown for its object. If I had been able to reach
London before him, without doubt the prize of the race would have been
mine; but he overtook me at Worcester.

"The genius of England was no longer with us, but with him. On the 3rd
of September, 1651, sire, the anniversary of the other battle of Dunbar,
so fatal to the Scots, I was conquered. Two thousand men fell around me
before I thought of retreating a step. At length I was obliged to fly.

"From that moment my history became a romance. Pursued with persistent
inveteracy, I cut off my hair, I disguised myself as a woodman. One day
spent amidst the branches of an oak gave to that tree the name of the
royal oak, which it bears to this day. My adventures in the county of
Stafford, whence I escaped with the daughter of my host on a pillion
behind me, still fill the tales of the country firesides, and would
furnish matter for ballads. I will some day write all this, sire, for
the instruction of my brother kings.

"I will first tell how, on arriving at the residence of Mr. Norton, I met
with a court chaplain, who was looking on at a party playing at skittles,
and an old servant who named me, bursting into tears, and who was as near
and as certainly killing me by his fidelity as another might have been by
treachery. Then I will tell of my terrors - yes, sire, of my terrors -
when, at the house of Colonel Windham, a farrier who came to shoe our
horses declared they had been shod in the north."

"How strange!" murmured Louis XIV. "I never heard anything of all that;
I was only told of your embarkation at Brighelmstone and your landing
in Normandy." (1)