It was fortunate that they went away from Charmouth when they did; by doing so they narrowly escaped apprehension; for that night, while the king's horse was in the stable, a smith was sent for to set a shoe upon the horse of one of the other travelers. After finishing his work, he began to examine the feet of the other horses in the stalls, and when he came to the one which the king had rode, his attention was particularly attracted to the condition and appearance of the shoes, and he remarked to those who were with him that that horse had come a long journey, and that of the four shoes, he would warrant that no two had been made in the same county. This remark was quoted the next day, and the mysterious circumstance, trifling as it was, was sufficient, in the highly excitable state of the public mind, to awaken attention. People came to see the horse, and to inquire for the owner, but they found that both had disappeared. They immediately determined that the stranger must have been the king, or at least some distinguished personage in disguise, and they sent in search of the party in every direction; but the travelers had taken such effectual precautions to blind all pursuit that their track could not be followed. In the mean time, the king journeyed secretly on from the residence of one faithful adherent to another, encountering many perplexities, and escaping narrowly many dangers, until he came at last to the neighborhood of Shoreham, a town upon the coast of Sussex. Colonel Gunter had provided a vessel here. It was a small vessel, bound, with a load of coal, along the coast, to the westward, to a port called Pool, beyond the Isle of Wight. Colonel Gunter had arranged it with the master to deviate from his voyage, by crossing over to the coast of France, and leaving his passengers there. He was then to return, and proceed to his original destination. Both the owner of the vessel and the master who commanded it were Royalists, but they had not been told that it was the king whom they were going to convey. In the bargain which had been made with them, the passengers had been designated simply as two gentlemen of rank who had escaped from the battle of Worcester. When, however, the master of the vessel saw the king, he immediately recognized him, having seen him before in his campaigns under his father. This, however, seemed to make no difference in his readiness to convey the passengers away. He said that hews perfectly willing to risk his life to save that of his sovereign, and the arrangements for the embarkation proceeded.