In the course of the day (Thursday, Nov. 7th), Sir Everard and his allies had a fresh cause of anxiety. On looking back, one of them descried a small body of horsemen in the distance. Filled with hope, thinking that it consisted of Catholics from the neighbourhood coming to join them, they halted, to enable the riders to come up, but, to their disappointment, the other party pulled up also. This was suspicious, and still more so when the mysterious group moved slowly after them on their starting again. Evidently the horsemen in their rear were watching their movements with no friendly intentions. To the conspirators, their distant but ever following figures must have produced sensations not unlike those caused to worn-out travellers by the appearance of vultures in the desert. So long as it was light, they kept catching occasional glimpses of them, and, worst of all, the band of "shadowers" was increasing in numbers and venturing nearer and nearer. The conspirators and their followers were not in actual flight; indeed, they professed to be recruiting for their "army"; but they were none the less steadily, if slowly, pursued by a body of horsemen exceeding their own in numbers, though not so well armed. It would be difficult to imagine anything more wretched than the little band of conspirators as they wended their way through the Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Staffordshire lanes and villages. Fagged and haggard were the men, on jaded and weary steeds, and their helmets, pikes, and pistols gave them an almost comical appearance of martial masquerade. The cart-loads of unused armour and weapons were terribly suggestive of failure, and the conspirators' appeals to the able-bodied men, who stood gazing at them from the doors of wayside inns and from village cross-roads, were met either with insult, laughter, or stolid indifference.