back in the evening to get some things he had need of for the voyage, locked him in his room and would not let him out; and he dared not break out lest the noise and his wife’s violent words might attract attention and the matter get noised abroad. Charles, by Wyndham’s advice, rode off to Bridport the next morning with Mistress Coningsby, as before, the Colonel going with them; Wilmot stayed behind. His horse cast a shoe, and Peters took it to the smith to have another put on; and the smith, examining the horse’s feet, said: “These three remaining shoes were put on in three different counties, and one looks like a Worcester shoe.” When the shoe was fixed, the smith went to a Puritan minister, one Bartholomew Wesley, and told him what he suspected. Wesley went to the landlady of the inn: “Why, Margaret,” said he, “you are now a maid of honour.” “What do you mean by that, Mr. Parson?” said she. “Why, Charles Stuart lay at your house last night, and kissed you at his departure, so that you cannot now but be a maid of honour.” Whereupon the hostess waxed wroth, and told Wesley that he was an ill-conditioned man to try and bring her and her house into trouble; but, with a touch of female vanity, she added: “If I thought it was the King, as you say it was, I should think the better of my lips all the days of my life. So, Mr. Parson, get you out of my house, or I’ll get those who shall kick you out.” However, the matter soon got abroad, and a pursuit began. Meanwhile, Charles and his party had pressed on into Bridport, which happened to be full of soldiers mustering there before joining a projected expedition to capture the Channel Islands for the Parliament. Charles’s presence of mind saved him. He pushed through the crowd into the inn yard, groomed the horse, chatted with the soldiers, who had no suspicion that he was other than he seemed, and then said that he must go and serve his mistress at table. By this time Wilmot and Peters had arrived, and they told him of the incident at the shoeing forge; so, losing no time, the party started on the Dorchester road, but, turning off into a by-lane, got safe to Broadwinsor, and thence once more to Trent, which they reached on September 24th. On October 5th Wilmot and Charles left Trent and made their way to Shoreham in Sussex. But they had not quite done with Dorset yet; for it was a Dorset skipper, one Tattersal, whose business it was to sail a collier brig, _The Surprise_, between Poole and Shoreham, who carried Charles Stuart and Lord Wilmot from Shoreham to Fécamp, and received the £60 that poor Limbrey might have had save for his wife’s interference.