"Well, well!" stammered Lady Pawlet. "There are some shall answer to God for this. Well, well!"

"Get to thy friends if thou hast any," said the Puritan, "and let them put thee beyond seas. There is an ordinance against Papists."

She stared at him; the body of the dead Cavalier was between them; the red candlelight and the white moonlight mingled grotesquely over the dead and the living.

"Ah yes," she said; her eyes wandered to her husband's face. "The King will be sorry," she added.

"The King," replied Cromwell, "hath troubles of his own to mourn for. Up, mistress, and be going. This is no place for mourner and Papists. Tell me some friend's house and I will have thee conveyed thither."

Lady Pawlet made no reply, and remained kneeling by the couch which held her husband.

Cromwell moved away abruptly; though professional insensibility and his hatred of the Papist checked the pity that was natural to him at any sight of distress, still his mystic, melancholy nature had been moved by the sight of the young man brought in dead. He thought he beheld in him a type of all the fair lives that had been ruined or lost since this war began—wasted men! And how many of them, one, two, or three thousand to-day, now being shovelled into the trenches at Broadmoor ... all English like this one ... all with some woman somewhere to weep for them....

He turned again to the immobile woman.

"Come, madam, come, come," he began, but his speech was broken by the entry of a soldier with some dispatches from Fairfax, who remained at Naseby, and with the statement that there was no surgeon conveniently to be brought.

"As for that," returned Cromwell, "the malignant is now in the hands of the Living God. But let that little white horse I saw be looked to." He turned to Lady Pawlet. "He is mine by right of war, but I will give thee a fair price for him if he be thine, since we are ever in need of horses."

She made no reply; Cromwell glanced at her frowningly.

"Gaveston," he said, "is there nought but this burnt ale in the house? Search for a glass of alicant for the malignant's wife, she hath neither strength to speak or move."

"Methinks the King did take the fleshpots with him when he fled from this Egypt," returned Gaveston. "There is scarce enough in the village to refresh the outer men of the saints themselves—but I will see if I can find a bottle of sack or alicant, General Cromwell."

Lady Pawlet, hitherto so immovable as to appear insensible, now suddenly rose to her feet, and, turning so that she stood with her back to her husband's body, stared at the General who remained at the table, not two paces away from her.

"Art thou Oliver Cromwell?" she cried, with a force and energy that was so in contrast to her former despairing apathy that the two men were startled, and Cromwell turned as if to face an accuser.

"I am he," he answered.

"Rebel and heretic!" cried the unfortunate lady. "May the curse of England rest on thee! May all the blood that has been spilt, and all the tears shed for those thou hast slain, cry out to the throne of God for a bolt to strike thee down!"

"Fond creature," replied Cromwell, "I am in covenant with the Lord, and I do the Lord's work, and your blasphemies do but waste the air."

"No! I am heard!" answered Lady Pawlet, to whom horror and wrath had given an exalted dignity and a desperate strength. "Man of blood and disloyalty, a scourge upon this land, a bitterness and a terror to these unhappy people!"

"Shall I take her away?" asked Gaveston, advancing.

"Nay," replied Cromwell, "let her speak. Words no more than swords touch those who wear the armour of the Lord. As for thee, vain, unhappy one, go and wrestle with the evil errors that hold thee, and pray that light be given to thy eternal darkness."

Lady Pawlet moved aside and pointed to her husband.

"He is dead," she said. "Only I know how good he was, how excellent and loyal—but he is dead in his early summer. And I, too, have lived my life."

"'Man is a thing of nought, he passeth away like a shadow,'" returned the Lieutenant-General sombrely. "We are but a little dust that the wind bloweth as it will."

"A brazen face and an iron hand!" cried Lady Pawlet wildly. "A wicked heart and a lying mouth! What has this unhappy England done that she cannot be delivered of thee?"

To the surprise of Sergeant Gaveston, Cromwell neither left the room nor ordered the removal of the frantic lady, but answered her earnestly, even passionately—

"Was it the Parliament first set up the standard of war? Nay, it was the King. Was it the Parliament that ever refused to come to an accommodation? Again the King. Was it the Parliament that roused the Highlands of Scotland to war? Nay, Montrose, the King's man. Was it the Parliament did command these horrid outrages in Ireland? Nay, Phelim O'Neil, the King's man. Therefore accuse us not of bloodshed, for we do but make a defence against violence and tyranny. We fight for God's people that they may have repose and blessing, and for this land that it may have liberty."

"Thou to talk of God's people, heretic of heretic, who hast rejected even thine own deluded Church!"

"Ay, and the blue and brown of the Presbyter as well as the lawn sleeves of the Bishop," cried Cromwell, pacing up and down in that agitation that often came on him when he was excited by any attack on his religious sincerity. "If the prayer-book is but a mess of pottage, what is the preaching of the Covenanters but dry chips offered to the soul starving for spiritual manna? Men of all sects fight side by side in my ranks—would they could do so at Westminster." He suddenly checked himself as he perceived that he was saying more than his place and dignity required, controlled the agitation that had hurried him into speech, and turned to Lady Pawlet, not without pity and tenderness—

"Gaveston, conduct this lady to Naseby where are the other gentlewomen taken to-day, and give her name and quality to Sir Thomas Fairfax. Take out the malignant and place him with his fellows in the trenches."

At this the unhappy wife gave a shriek and hurled herself across the dead Cavalier, desperately clinging to his limp arms and pressing her bright head against his bloodied coat.

"My dear, they want to put you in the ground! I went to find you—you were alive; what has happened now? I found you; what has happened? They shall not take you away. Leave me," as Gaveston tried to move her from the body; "he is not dead." She looked up and the tears were falling down her cheeks. "I have nothing of him—no child. Would you take him away?"

"Leave them here," said Cromwell. Since he had beheld his wife mourning her two eldest sons he could not bear to see a woman weep, and the young Cavalier had still that dreadful look of young Oliver. "Send some woman from the village to her, and in the morning, when she is removed, you might bury him. Take my things upstairs—wait"——He broke open the packages and, holding them near the candlelight, looked over the contents.

"Nothing I need answer to-night," he said, and glanced again at the slim figure of the young woman as she clung to her dead in her agony, the bright unbounded hair all that was left of beauty that had been so fresh and lovely.

"So is it with the ungodly," he muttered sombrely. "How suddenly do they perish, consume, and come to a fearful end! Even like a dream when one awaketh!"

So saying, he turned abruptly into the garden and walked away from the house.

All the June flowers showed silver pale against the dark lines of the hedges and the box trees clipped into the forms of dragons and peacocks—monstrous, clumsy shapes now against a sky filled with the pale purity of the moonlight. Somewhere a fountain tinkled a thin jet of water into a shallow basin; a seat, a sundial, a statue showed here and there as the pleasance led to the fishpond, where the wet leaves of water-lilies gleamed, and, past that, a bowling-green, shaded with noble limes, then to the orchards of apple trees bending above the tall grass scattered with daisies, where the grounds ended in a wooden paling which fenced a little copse full of hidden birds and flowers.

The Puritan soldier passed through the garden without noticing the sleeping loveliness or reflecting on the desolation it soon would be: his mind was solely on his work, on what he had done, on what he must do—occupied with all the doubts and terrors of the struggle between the uplifted spirit and the still passionate human nature.

Outwardly he never faltered or hesitated, but inwardly all was often black and awful: a thousand perplexities assailed his strong understanding, a thousand different emotions warred in his warm and ardent heart.

Usually his spiritual enthusiasm went hand in hand with his physical courage and capacity, with his earthly feelings and hopes; but sometimes these jarred with each other, and then the old melancholy rolled over his soul.

When he had walked unheeding as far as the paling and was stopped there, by lack of a gate, he folded his arms on the fence and gazed ahead of him into the sweet night.

He was fatigued, yet far from the thought of sleep; the excitement of the battle and the pursuit, the thrill of victory were still with him....

And yet ... and yet ... the dead face of Sir William Pawlet and the no less terrible countenance of his wife came before the soldier's vision.... And how many thousands of these were there not now in England, how many homes deserted like this one, how many fugitives flying beyond seas, how many comely corpses being tumbled into the trenches dug among the rabbit burrows on Broad Moor? So many that the rolling hillocks would be all great graves, and for long years no man would be able to turn the earth there with a plough but he would disturb the mouldering dead.

What if he had to answer for this blood? Was not he the man who had always urged war—been the soul and inspiration of the conflict, so that the malignants turned and cursed him, even as Lady Pawlet had this very evening, believing him to be the foremost of their enemies?

"Lord God," he cried out, grasping the fence with his strong hands, "I do not fight for gain or power, for pride or hot blood, but for Thy service, as Thou knowest! What am I but a worm in Thy sight, yet Thou hast given me success through Thy lovely mercy and made me a fear unto them who defy Thee! Hast Thou not declared that Thine enemies shall be scattered like the dust, and they who dwell in the wilderness kneel before Thee? Bring us that time, O Lord, bring Thy promised peace and scatter those who delight in war! For Thou hast said, 'I will bring My people again as I did from Basan, Mine own will I bring again, as I did sometime from the deep of the sea!'"

These words, which he spoke out loudly and in a strong voice, were wafted strangely over the sleeping copse, where even the nightingale was silent now; the sound of them seemed to be blown back again and to echo in his soul strongly even after his lips were silent.

He suddenly remembered when last he had rested against a fence; it was that November day outside St. Ives, when God had come to him as he walked his humble fields in obscurity and given him promise of grace.

His whole being shook with joy at the recollection; he put his hand to the cross of his sword, and as he touched the cold metal he again felt God stoop towards him, and saw the future and the labour of the future clear and blessed.