head as short at the top as the scissors would do it, but leaving some about the ears according to the mode of the country. The King bade William burn the hair which he cut off, but William was only disobedient in that, for he kept a good part of it, wherewith he has since pleasured some persons of honor, and is kept as a civil relique."
But his sense of rest and safety was of short duration. On the very day that he was thus taken into the Boscobel house, Humphrey, one of the sturdy brothers, went to Shiffnal, only four or five miles distant, and there met "a Colonel of the rebels" who had just come from Worcester in pursuit of the King, and had heard that he had been at the White Ladies. As Humphrey lived in the immediate neighbourhood of that place, the Colonel examined him very closely, threatening the penalty denounced against any one who should harbour or conceal the King, and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for discovering him. But the stout-hearted yeoman stood fast to his loyalty, which braved threats and spurned a thousand pounds in his poverty as easily as a thousand farthings. So the Colonel could make nothing of him. But he might make all he wished of some one else with such threats and bribes. When Humphrey told the King on his return of his adventure at Shiffnal, he began to feel himself in an unsafe position, even with such faithful men
