faithful attendants, started for Falmouth. [Illustration: "If capture is sure blow up the vessel" she said] It was mid-summer, yet when we read of all that the queen suffered it seems wonderful that she ever lived to reach the town. Hardly had the party got out of sight of the Cathedral towers of Exeter when they saw a troop of men in glittering armour riding towards them. Luckily in a wooded hollow near by was a small hut, half in ruins, and here they hid themselves, scarcely able to breathe from fear, as the loud voices of the soldiers broke the stillness, jesting over the queen's fate. But they passed in a cloud of dust, never guessing that only a few feet of grass had lain between them and their prey, and when darkness fell the fugitives crept out and were soon making their way over Dartmoor. Here they were joined by lord Jermyn, who till her death loyally followed the queen's fortunes, and by the little dwarf Sir Geoffrey Hudson, who in happier days had been made a knight by Charles I. This terrible journey had lasted for a fortnight before the queen found herself on board a small Dutch ship bound for France. Half-way across the Channel the ship was spied by an English vessel on the lookout for French cruisers, which immediately gave chase. At one time escape appeared impossible, and all the fighting blood of Henri IV. beat high in the veins of his daughter. 'If capture is sure, blow up the vessel,' she said to the captain, who stood at the prow, keeping an anxious watch. 'As for death, I fear it not at all, but alive they shall never have me.' Fortunately a crowd of French boats now appeared in the offing, and the English ship altered her course and steered for the coast of Devon. Then a gale sprang up and again they were all in peril. When morning broke the friendly fleet had been scattered far and wide, and the Dutch captain placed the fugitives in a small boat, which was rowed to shore. Oh how thankful Henrietta Maria was to hear her native language once again and to feel herself in France! She had only a peasant's hut to sleep in and peasant's food to eat, but for the first time during many months she was able both to sleep and eat without a dread, of being roused up to fly. By and bye all her terrors would awake on behalf of those whom she had left behind her, but at present she was too exhausted to be able to think at all. And so she rested till the news of her arrival reached Paris, and the king of France's mother, Anne of Austria, sent carriages and an escort to bring her unfortunate sister-in-law home to the Louvre.