I was busied with these matters during the next two days, but on the 2nd of February, being the third day after the King’s execution, I said farewell to Master Goodfellow and his wife and set forth upon my journey homeward, being well satisfied to depart from London, which great city I admired vastly, but had no very pleasant memories of. You may be sure that I was glad enough at the thought of seeing Dale’s Field and my dear love again, and as I rode along the road I made up my mind that we would waste no more time, but call Parson Drumbleforth’s services into requisition and be married out of hand. And that done, I would leave my home no more, neither for King nor Commons, but would attend to my business and find my pleasure in my own land and my own house as a yeoman should. For by that time I had had enough of war and turmoil and of adventures here and there, and it seemed to me that there was naught like a quiet life. And therewith I fell at meditating on what General Cromwell had said to me about there being other folk than myself that did desire to live peaceably on their farms but were called to other things, and I decided that such were more to be pitied than envied.
I spent the first night of my homeward journey at Hitchin, and went forward the next day to Huntingdon, where I slept the second night, and until this point I met with no adventure worth recording. As for the talk at the inns, it was of naught but the King’s death, respecting which every man was willing to converse, but few to venture an opinion. I said naught on the matter, being anxious to escape questions, which would certainly have been showered upon me if I had admitted that I was present at the scene before Whitehall. That scene, indeed, was never out of my mind, and I dreamed of it more than once during the next few weeks.
On the third day of my journey, when I was drawing near to Peterborough, I saw before me on the roadside the figure of a man who lay stretched out on the bank as if he were ill or dead, while his horse stood near him cropping the grass. It was a cold, raw afternoon, and I immediately concluded that the man had fallen from his horse and was now insensible, or he would never lie there in such peril of his life. So I rode up to him, and, dismounting, bent down to see what it was that ailed him. There was something familiar in his countenance, but I took little heed of it at the moment, for the man was insensible and blue with cold, and looked deathlike to my mind. Now, I had in my saddlebag a small flask of strong waters which Mistress Goodfellow had pressed upon me, and I immediately produced this and poured a little of its contents between the man’s lips. At first there seemed to be no effect, but presently he sighed deeply and opened his eyes somewhat, so that I redoubled my exertions and strove hard to bring him to. While I was thus engaged I had leisure to study his face, and then I saw that he was the man who had knocked at the door of the wayside inn between Aberford and Castleford, and had manifested such uneasy symptoms at sight of me.
In a few minutes the man opened his eyes and looked at me. The light was already failing, but it was sufficiently strong to allow of his recognising me, and again I saw the horrified look come into his face which I had first seen when I opened John Sanderson’s door to him that morning after my release from the Parliamentarians’ camp before York. It was a look of such fear as I never saw on any other man’s face, and was all the worse to me because I did not understand it.
“Come, master,” said I, “there is no need to look so frightened; I am neither thief nor cutthroat, and desire naught but your good. Have you fallen from your horse that you lie here like this?”
“Ay,” said he faintly. “I am ill, dying, sir, I think, this three days. Ride on, good sir, and leave me.”
“Nay, friend,” I answered, “I shall not leave you till you are in some safe hands. Come, we
