In the days of the saddle and pack-horse, however, things were different with Mitcheldean. Being on one of the direct routes of travel from the metropolis to South Wales, and a gate of entry, as it were, to the Forest on its eastern side, it was then a place of considerable note; its people accustomed to all sorts of wayfarers passing daily, hourly through it. Since the breaking out of the Rebellion these had been mostly of the military kind, though not confined to either party in the strife. One would march through to-day, the other to-morrow; so that, hearing the trample of hoofs, rarely could the townsmen tell whether Royalists or Parliamentarians were coming among them, till they saw their standards in the street. They would rather have received visit from neither; but, compelled to choose, preferred seeing the soldiers of the Parliament. So when Walwyn's Horse came rattling along, their green coats, with the cocks'-tail feathers in their hats, distinguishable in the clear moonlight, the closed window shutters were flung open; and night-capped heads--for most had been abed--appeared in them without fear exchanging speech with the soldiers halted in the street below. Altogether different their behaviour when, in a matter of ten minutes after, a second party of horsemen came to a halt under their windows; these in scarlet coats, gold laced, with white ostrich feathers in their hats--the Prince of Wales's plume, with its appropriate motto of servility, "_Ich dien_." Seeing it, the townsmen drew in their heads, closed the shutters, and were silent. Not going back to their beds, however; but to sit up in fear and trembling, till the renewed hoof-strokes told them of the halt over, and the red-coated Cavaliers ridden off again. It need scarce be said that these were Rupert and his escort, _en route_ for Westbury; and had Walwyn's Horse stopped ten minutes longer in Mitcheldean, the two bodies would have there met face to face; since they were proceeding in opposite directions. A mere accident hindered their encountering; the circumstance, that from the town two roads led up to the Forest, one on each side of the Wilderness, both again uniting in the valley of Drybrook. The northern route had been taken by the Parliamentarian party ascending; while the Royalists descended by the southern one, called the "Plump Hill." Just at such time as to miss one another, though but by a few minutes. For the rearmost files of the former had barely cleared the skirts of the town going out, when the van of the latter entered it at a different point. The interval, however, was long enough to prevent those who went Forestwards from getting information of what they were leaving so close behind. Could they have had that, quick would have been their return down hill, and the streets of Mitcheldean the arena of a conflict to the cry, "No Quarter!"