King Lear.

“Am I—­oh! am I going home?” thought Anne.  “My uncle will be at Winchester.  I am glad of it.  I could not yet bear to see Portchester again.  That Shape would be there.  Yet how shall I deal with what seems laid on me?  But oh! the joy of escaping from this weary, weary court!  Oh, the folly that took me hither!  Now that the Prince is gone, Lady Strickland will surely speak to the Queen for my dismissal.”

There had been seventeen days of alarms, reports, and counter-reports, and now the King, with the Prince of Denmark, had gone to join the army on Salisbury Plain, and at the same time the little Prince of Wales had been sent off to his half-brother, the Duke of Berwick, at Portsmouth, under charge of Lady Powys, there to be embarked for France.  Anne had been somewhat disappointed at not going with them, hoping that when at Portsmouth or in passing Winchester she might see her uncle and obtain her release, for she had no desire to be taken abroad; but it was decreed otherwise.  Miss Dunord went, rejoicing and thankful to be returning to France, and the other three rockers remained.

There had already been more than one day of alarms and tumults.  The Body-guards within were always on duty; the Life-guards without were constantly patrolling; and on the 5th of November, when the Prince of Orange was known to be near at hand, and was in fact actually landing at Torbay, the mob had with difficulty been restrained from burning in effigy, not only Guy Fawkes, but Pope, cardinals, and mitred bishops, in front of the palace, and actually paraded them all, with a figure of poor Sir Edmondbury Godfrey bearing his head in his hand, tied on horseback behind a Jesuit, full before the windows, with yells of

“The Pope, the Pope,
Up the ladder and down the rope,”

and clattering of warming-pans.

Jane Humphreys was dreadfully frightened.  Anne found her crouching close to her bed, with the curtains wrapped round her.  “Have they got in?” she cried.  “O Miss Woodford, how shall we make them believe we are good Protestants?”

And when this terror had subsided, and it was well known that the Dutch were at Exeter, there was another panic, for one of the Life-guardsmen had told her to beware, since if the Royal troops at Hounslow were beaten, the Papists would surely take their revenge.

“I am to scream from the windows to Mr. Shaw,” she said; but what good will that do if the priests and the Frenchmen have strangled me?  And perhaps he won’t be on guard.”

“He was only trying to frighten you,” suggested Anne.

“Dear me, Miss Woodford, aren’t you afraid?  You have the stomach of a lion.”

“Why, what would be the good of hurting us?”

However, Anne was not at all surprised, when on the very evening of the Prince’s departure, old Mrs. Humphreys, a venerable-looking dame in handsome but Puritanically-fashioned garments, came in a hackney coach to request in her son’s name that her granddaughter might return with her, as her occupation was at an end.