And now at last, my patient listeners, I shall be able to carry you out
of the humble life of the village, and to cease my gossip of the men who
were old when I was young, and who are now lying this many a year in the
Bedhampton churchyard. You shall come with me now, and you shall see
England as it was in those days, and you shall hear of how we set forth
to the wars, and of all the adventures which overtook us. And if what I
tell you should ever chance to differ from what you have read in the
book of Mr. Coke or of Mr. Oldmixon, or of any one else who has set
these matters down in print, do ye bear in mind that I am telling of
what I saw with these very eyes, and that I have helped to make history,
which is a higher thing than to write it.

It was, then, towards nightfall upon the twelfth day of June 1685 that
the news reached our part of the country that Monmouth had landed the
day before at Lyme, a small seaport on the boundary between Dorsetshire
and Devonshire. A great beacon blaze upon Portsdown Hill was the first
news that we had of it, and then came a rattling and a drumming from
Portsmouth, where the troops were assembled under arms. Mounted
messengers clattered through the village street with their heads low on
their horses' necks, for the great tidings must be carried to London,
that the Governor of Portsmouth might know how to act. [Note B,
Appendix.] We were standing at our doorway in the gloaming, watching
the coming and the going, and the line of beacon fires which were
lengthening away to the eastward, when a little man galloped up to the
door and pulled his panting horse up.

'Is Joseph Clarke here?' he asked.

'I am he,' said my father.