Sound sleep works wonders on a healthy body, and so the morning found me mightily refreshed; nor did it trouble me to think that three dead men lay out upon the eastern shore. I had not sought the quarrel, but had only fought for life and liberty; therefore I felt no guiltiness, and let the matter rest: and, truly, there was quite enough to occupy my thoughts in other ways. I will not dwell upon the saddened doings of that day. Ere noon we laid my father in his grave, high up above the sea--fit resting-place for one who had been born and bred in hearing of its solemn music, and who had ever loved it dearly. Few people (scarce a dozen) gathered round us in the churchyard; nor was I sorry, for at such times a crowd of staring eyes is little to my liking. A week before it had been vastly different; scores would then have flocked to see the last of him who had been known by everyone. But now the town was rife with rank rebellion. Its people had gone mad with frenzied hopes as vain and empty as a shadow, but which, alas! within a few short weeks were turned into a scourge of death too horrible to contemplate. Yes, verily, Lyme Regis had gone daft in Monmouth’s cause. The turmoil of it reached us like a sound of mockery in which we had no part; and, gazing down into the silent grave, I felt that it was well indeed with him who lay therein. And so we left him there, in peace, beside my mother. That sad business done, the hours dragged by in dreary fashion, for at such times the mourners lag behind to mope and weep, as though ’twere sinful to be brave and cheerful, as though, in fact, there were no hope beyond the tomb. The only time I caught a change--a glint of hopefulness upon their dolorous faces--was at the reading of the will; and even that soon passed, for everything was left to me. But all things, whether good or evil, have an end, and ere sunset I had waved a glad good-bye unto the last of those my doleful guests, and so was free to dwell in silence on my future plans. And truly there was plenty to be done, and little time in which to do it; for I had resolved to ride forth with the dawn to Exeter, where lay the Royalist army, commanded by the Duke of Albemarle.