The place served as lodging for about fifty prisoners, many of whom had been from two to three weeks in captivity. The majority of them were rough, ignorant peasants, who, having faithfully followed their leaders into a quarrel which they themselves but half comprehended, now awaited their doom with that same half-puzzled, stolid patience and dogged courage which had helped them already to face death on the fatal field of Sedgemoor. There were some, too, of the yeoman class, some of the richer townsfolk, and here and there a noncomformist divine, but save perhaps in a certain intelligence and eagerness of expression, there was nothing to distinguish the man of learning or station from the poorest peasant. All alike were dirty, ragged, and dishevelled; unshaven, unwashed, with ill-kempt beards and hair. Existence in such a prison, following in many cases upon days of homeless wanderings, had wrought this levelling effect upon them all. Their money, what little they once possessed, was long ago exhausted. They could pay their gaolers for neither books, amusements, nor drink. They talked little; what was there to talk of? For the most part they were plunged in the deepest apathy. They had fought, they had failed; now they awaited what was to come in silence. They showed no fear, no despair, no hope, only a great patience. Barbara gazed on the scene with the utmost astonishment and indignation. Were these men, indeed, the same wild enthusiasts who a while ago had so eagerly cheered Monmouth through the streets of Taunton? Aye, and not only cheered him, but aided him loyally, leaving work, home, wife, children, and all, that they might follow him and strike a blow for the Cause. Were these indeed those who, armed but with stake or scythe, had made such a gallant stand against the best disciplined troops of the country; those who (men were forced to confess) would but for an accident, undoubtedly have won an unprecedented victory? Could these indeed be the same? She stared with anger and scorn at their silence, their apathy, their unkempt looks. Her ardent young nature had no understanding of this submission to the Inevitable; she had not yet learned that an Inevitable might exist. Her birth and breeding afforded her no comprehension of the stolid bravery of the peasantry. The farther man is removed from the natural state, the greater the advance he has made in civilisation, so much the more does he deem it necessary to hide his emotions beneath an artificial mask, to seem to be that which he is not. A century later in the massacres in Paris the victims were for the most part nobles and gentlemen; they went to their doom bravely, with a smile in their eyes, a jest upon their lips. In this great Rebellion of the West the victims were the poorest of the peasantry; they faced their doom no less bravely, but they faced it gravely, in silence.