Mr. Wilding, as we know, was to remain at Bridgwater for the purpose of collecting from Mr. Newlington the fine which had been imposed upon him. It is by no means clear whether Monmouth realized the fullness of the tragedy at the merchant's house, and whether he understood that, stricken with apoplexy at the thought of parting with so considerable a portion of his fortune, Mr. Newlington had not merely fainted, but had expired under His Grace's eyes. If he did realize it he was cynically indifferent, and lest we should be doing him an injustice by assuming this we had better give him the benefit of the doubt, and take it that in the subsequent bustle of departure, his mind filled with the prospect of the night attack to be delivered upon his uncle's army at-Sedgemoor, he thought no more either of Mr. Newlington or of Mr. Wilding. The latter, as we know, had no place in the rebel army; although a man of his hands, he was not a trained soldier, and notwithstanding that he may fully have intended to draw his sword for Monmouth when the time came, yet circumstances had led to his continuing after Monmouth's landing the more diplomatic work of movement-man, in which he had been engaged for the months that had preceded it.
So it befell that when Monmouth's army marched out of Bridgwater at eleven o'clock on that Sunday night, not to make for Gloucester and Cheshire, as was generally believed, but to fall upon the encamped Feversham at Sedgemoor and slaughter the royal army in their beds, Mr. Wilding was left behind. Trenchard was gone, in command of his troop of horse, and Mr. Wilding had for only company his thoughts touching the singular happenings of that busy night.
He went back to the sign of The Ship overlooking the Cross, and, kicking off his sodden shoes, he supped quietly in the room of which shattered door and broken window reminded him of his odd interview with Ruth, and of the comedy of love she had enacted to detain him there. The thought of it embittered him; the part she had played seemed to his retrospective mind almost a wanton's part--for all that in name she was his wife. And yet, underlying a certain irrepressible nausea, came the reflection that, after all, her purpose had been to save his life. It would have been a sweet thought, sweet enough to have overlaid that other bitterness, had he not insisted upon setting it down entirely to her gratitude and her sense of justice. She intended to repay the debt in which she had stood to him since, at the risk of his own life and fortune, he had rescued her brother from the clutches of the Lord-Lieutenant at Taunton.