Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

I am fairly tied to the chariot-wheels of history now, my dear children, / and must follow on with name and place and date, whether my tale suffer / by it or no. With such a drama as this afoot it were impertinent to / speak of myself, save in so far as I saw or heard what may make these / old scenes more vivid to you. It is no pleasant matter for me to dwell / upon, yet, convinced as I am that there is no such thing as chance / either in the great or the little things of this world, I am very sure / that the sacrifices of these brave men were not thrown away, and that / their strivings were not as profitless as might at first sight appear. / If the perfidious race of Stuart is not now seated upon the throne, and / if religion in England is still a thing of free growth, we may, to my / thinking, thank these Somerset yokels for it, who first showed how small / a thing would shake the throne of an unpopular monarch. Monmouth's / army was but the vanguard of that which marched throe years later into / London, when James and his cruel ministers were flying as outcasts over / the face of the earth.

On the night of June 27, or rather early in the morning of June 28, we / reached the town of Frome, very wet and miserable, for the rain had come / on again, and all the roads were quagmires. From this next day we pushed / on once more to Wells, where we spent the night and the whole of the / next day, to give the men time to get their clothes dry, and to recover / themselves after their privations.