I was watching the crowd at my bed-room window when the horsemen trotted off. While I stood looking at them, Mr. Blick ran upstairs, bidding me to come down at once, as now there was a chance to get to Lyme. “Come quick,” he said. “The troops are gone. We must follow on their tracks. It'll be too late later in the morning.” In less than twenty minutes we were trotting after the soldiers at a good pace, passing some scores of men on foot who were hurrying, as they said, to see the battle. Mr. Blick wore a sword which clattered as he rode. The people hearing the noise thought that he was an officer, perhaps a colonel, riding with his servant. Many of the men asked him where the battle was to be, whether it would begin before daylight, whether Monmouth was come with the French, all sorts of questions, to which we answered at random. In the light summer night we had a fair view of things. When we dismounted to lead our horses up or down the steep hills of that road, the straggling sight-seers came all round us as we walked, to hear what we had to tell. We could see their faces all about us, strange in the dusk, like ghosts, not like real men. At the top of one hill, Mr. Blick warned them to look out for themselves. He told them that before morning the highway would be patrolled by troops who would take them in charge as suspicious characters trying to join Monmouth, which actually happened the next day when the militia officers realized that war had begun. His words scared off a number of them; but many kept on as they were going, to see the great battle, which, they said, would begin as soon as it was light. When the sun began to peep, we turned off the highway in order to avoid Bridport, which we passed a little after dawn. A few miles further on we felt that we could turn into the road again as we were safe from the militia at that distance. Then, feeling happy at the thought of the coming contest, which, we felt sure, would be won by our side, we pressed our tired nags over the brook towards the steep hill which separates Charmouth from Lyme.