Thus it was not till near upon noon that they discovered their loss, whereat the greatness of the ensign's fury passes any power of description that is in my pen. He said the two remaining should hang twice or thrice ere they died, to make of the spectacle as good entertainment as he had promised to the folk of that most loyal village of Drayton; but, proceeding to the execution of this cruelty, and having, to the enhancement of his wrath, but a small band of spectators, the most part keeping their houses in fear and sorrow, before he had ordered the hapless men, already in the agony of death, to be cut down the first time, his evil work was interrupted by the coming of that soldier who had on the previous evening been so cunningly cajoled by Mistress Prue and her cozening flatteries. This man had been threatened with the anger of Colonel Kirke and the most terrible military punishments unless he succeeded in discovering his escaped prisoner. Failing in this, he had, on encountering Prudence in a back passage leading to her father's forge, thought at least to display his zeal in hauling her by the hair before his officer, there to denounce her as his seducer from duty. In so doing he gave those two poor rebels a quick and easy death of their first hanging, while Prue shortly found, to the great altering of my after-life, a champion with a strong hand--no other, indeed, than him of whom is my book and my thought while I live. Two days before this time Mr. Edward Royston was about leaving Oxford to visit Lady Mary at her house in London, when he was apprised of the sufferings of our western folk subsequent to the battle of Sedgemoor. Being now of a man's estate (for his entrance at the College of Corpus Christi was at an age much beyond the common) and of a nature graver than his years, he was impelled by his love for his people of Royston, and his pity of the dangers their misleading might bring upon them, without delay to set out for his home in Somerset, resolved to do what he might to order things fitly. Warning his mother by letter of his purpose, he took the road by Reading and Salisbury, in which city, arrived late at night, he heard what did but increase his desire to be at Royston, so that with moonrise he was again in the saddle, riding all that night alone; for his servant's horse had reached Salisbury clean foundered, and, nags being mighty scarce from the needs of two armies lately in the field at no great distance, he was forced to leave the man behind until he could be mounted. Thus it was that he came riding through Drayton village just in the last struggles of those two poor rebels, and amid the lamentable cries of Prudence in the rough grasp of her outwitted redcoat.