Many of the prisoners were sick, and some still suffering from wounds. Amongst these moved a grey-haired gentleman, endeavouring, by word and touch, to give relief. His name was Dr. Temple, and he told me that he hailed from Nottingham, but had been in the Netherlands some years; that when Monmouth’s expedition sailed thence he had shipped as surgeon, being told that they were bound for western seas, and had not found out the truth until they had been two days at sea. At Sedgemoor he had worked zealously among the wounded of both sides--and this was his reward! "I am old," said he, "and if death comes it finds me well upon the road to meet it. But you are young and strong, and it troubles me to see you here." Far into the night we two sat talking, until at last, in spite of stifling heat and groans, we fell asleep. I dreamt prodigiously, and, strange as it may seem to you, my dreams were not unpleasant--being for the most part of old, happy days long passed--but, oh, the grim awakening! *CHAPTER XXIII* *"The Scourge of the West"* For one long, awful week I had lain a prisoner in that foul den, when at length, on the third day of September, the roll of drums and blare of trumpets told us that Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys was come into the town to hold assize. Next morning he attended service at St. Mary’s Church, and ’tis said that when the preacher mentioned mercy Jeffreys laughed aloud; and I can well believe it, for with him "the quality of mercy", so far from being "strained", was utterly unknown. That day the bloody work began. Prisoners were hurried off in batches to the court-house to be tried, and soon returned with faces which told plainly of the sentence passed upon them. It had been pressed upon us by our jailers that our only chance of pardon lay in pleading guilty, but this was quickly found to be nothing save a wicked trap to hasten on the business; for no sooner did a man plead guilty than he was condemned to death. Never shall I forget the woeful, desperate looks of those poor fellows as they were thrust back into the prison with the shadow of the gallows over them. It was as though each had the noose already round his neck. All day long this branding for the death went forward, until at last, when the judge rose from his labours, nearly a hundred had been sentenced; Dr. Temple, old Sam Larkyns, and Sampson Larke, the grey-haired Baptist minister of Lyme, among them.