fain to run, and laying hold on me before I could open the door,
brought me back to my place again.

Being thus disappointed, I took a pen and ink, and wrote a few
lines, which I sealed up, and gave to the apprentice in the shop,
who had carried himself handsomely towards me, and desired him to
deliver it to that Friend who was their neighbour, which he promised
to do.

By the time I had done this came the soldier that was appointed to
conduct me out of town. I knew the man, for he lived within a mile
of me, being, through poverty, reduced to keep an alehouse; but he
had lived in better fashion, having kept an inn at Thame, and by
that means knew how to behave himself civilly, and did so to me.

He told me he was ordered to wait on me to Wheatley, and to tarry
there at such an inn, until Esquire Clark came thither, who would
then take me home with him in his coach. Accordingly to Wheatley we
walked (which is from Oxford some four or five miles), and long we
had not been there before Clark and a great company of men came in.

He alighted, and stayed awhile to eat and drink (though he came but
from Oxford), and invited me to eat with him; but I, though I had
need enough, refused it; for indeed their conversation was a burthen
to my life, and made me often think of and pity good Lot.

He seemed, at that time, to be in a sort of mixed temper, between
pleasantness and sourness. He would sometimes joke (which was
natural to him), and cast out a jesting flirt at me; but he would
rail maliciously against the Quakers. "If" said he to me, "the King