Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/287

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and its Green Border-Land.
273

doors so open and free, that they were deceived by this show of unconsciousness of fugitives, and left again without searching the apartments. The host, Mr. Whitgreaves, acted the innocent so naturally, and threw open his doors with such an easy and serene face, that he saved his sovereign from the fate of Charles I. From Moseley the King was conducted by night to Colonel Lane's at Bentley, and from thence escaped to France via Bristol, by that expedient which painters have so often portrayed on canvas.

As we stood by the open lid of the oaken box in which the hunted King was secreted in the Boscobel house. I could not but think of analogous experiences in the lives of some of his enemies when it came their turn to fly before him. Whilst looking down into that square hole, where he lay wearied in fitful sleep with his head against one wall and his feet against the other, it was easy and natural for the thought to dart across the ocean to the cave's mouth in the West Rock, at New Haven. In the tortuous recesses of those vaulted rocks, night after night and week after week, three of the judges that condemned Charles I to death hid themselves, while soldiers of the Restoration were hunting after them, as Cromwell's bands hunted Charles II up and down England. If the book is still extant, no better place could be found than Boscobel for reading "Style's