Then we left the cottages behind and dropped sharply down into a sheltered hollow, and there below was revealed to us the rambling and ghostly-looking old manor-house of Madeley Court, a romance in stone, built in the far-off Elizabethan days when men built pictures as well as homes. A large, cheerless pool of water, dark and still, on one side of the ancient and time-dimmed house added to the dreary and eerie impression of the spot as it is to-day: that pool was suggestive to me of some evil deed done in past days, though why I know not, but over all the ancient place there brooded a certain indefinable sense of mystery. It seemed to hold a life apart from its present-day, commonplace surroundings. [Illustration: MADELEY COURT.] It was probably on this very lane that, wet through to the skin, weary and hungry, Charles II. recently escaped from Worcester, sought shelter with his guide, Richard Penderel, under a hedge from the pouring rain. Charles had fled from "the faithful city" with a few followers and had sought temporary asylum at White Ladies, the house of Charles Giffard, that gentleman being recommended to the king by the Earl of Derby. Giffard, however, advised the king not to tarry there, as his house was well known, and suggested that he should go to his retired hunting-box of Boscobel, where there were hiding-holes that had not been discovered; so to Boscobel the king went escorted by one Richard Penderel, a trusted retainer of Giffard's. Now two other retainers of the same family of the Penderels, William Penderel and Joan his wife, had charge of Boscobel, where they assisted, from time to time, in secreting persecuted Roman Catholic priests; indeed chiefly, if not wholly, for this purpose of giving refuge to such fugitives was Boscobel in reality built and planned: the hiding-holes there were no after-thoughts. Boscobel was then "an obscure habitation in a wilderness of woods," and was ostensibly merely a hunting-box. After resting there a few days the king became uneasy, for it had become known to the Parliamentarians that he had escaped into Shropshire, and troops of soldiers were scouring the country all around in search of him. So Charles determined to endeavour to make his way into Wales, but before starting forth he had himself disguised by having his locks cut off, his face and hands stained with walnut juice, and then to complete the disguise he donned a woodman's attire belonging to one of the Penderels, and he consented to be known as Will Jones. Thus disguised, one stormy night the king, with the faithful Richard Penderel for a guide, tramped to Madeley close to the Severn, trusting to find shelter there either at Madeley Court, the home of that staunch Royalist, Sir Basil Brooke, and personal friend of Giffard's, or at another house on the hill above, the abode of William Woolf, a yeoman and an honest man well known to Giffard, both houses having the conveniences of hiding-holes.