Lieutenant-General Cromwell lay encamped outside Oxford; Chester had lately fallen, and Gloucester, and when the Parliamentarians took Oxford, as they must certainly soon take it, the King would have not a foot of ground left in England.

The King was in Oxford; he had gone from Newark to Wales, he had wandered awhile with such scattered forces as were left him with Rupert and Maurice, and then he had returned once more to the faithful, loyal city that might continue to be both faithful and loyal, but could not much longer resist the enemy that was ever pressing closer round her grey walls.

It was April. "We must end the war this year," Cromwell said. The people expected a peace and a settlement from the Parliament; the only question now in the minds of the leaders was, what peace and settlement would the King make, and keep, now he was fairly beaten?

This question was foremost night and day in the mind of General Cromwell.

This day, towards the end of April, he sat in his tent outside the beleaguered city, smoking a pipeful of Virginian tobacco and gazing out at the spring landscape and the near encampment of the Parliamentarian army, which was illumined by the dubious light of a misty moon.

Two companions were with him—Henry Ireton, who was to wed Bridget Cromwell at the conclusion of the war, and Major Harrison, a soldier not so entirely to the Lieutenant-General's liking as his prospective son-in-law, still, a deeply religious man and dauntless soldier, if too strongly tinged with that fanaticism which was now the mainspring of the new model army.

A discussion which involved some difference of opinion was taking place between the three Puritans; Cromwell, who was one against two, was much more silent than his wont, for it was usual for him to speak at great length, with many illustrations of his meaning (which served, however, as much for confusing his purpose as for enlightening it, and had already got him the name of dissembler among his opponents) and great fervour and enthusiasm; he could never be called taciturn, but to-night he was silent with a kind of dumbness as if one of his melancholies were on him, whereas Harrison and Ireton expounded their case with much rigour and eloquence.

And their case was that the King was utterly and entirely not to be trusted, and that any pact or bargain made with him would be a useless thing, not worth the sheepskin it was written upon.

"As witness," said Major Harrison, "his solemn protestation to the Commons that he loved them as his own children, and a few days after his coming down to the House and claiming the five—as witness his promises and false oaths to Parliament which his papers taken at Naseby did show he never meant to keep, but was the while trying to bring over Lorrainers to cut our throats—and what of this last business in Ireland when he sent Lord Glamorgan over to stir up the Irish Papists, and then, when the scheme was discovered, forsook my lord and utterly denied him and the Papists too?"

"As he forsook Strafford," added Ireton. "That deed alone would have spoilt the credit of a private man, and to my thinking spoils the credit of a king too."

"He tried to save him," said Cromwell briefly.

"Nay, his lady, being Sir Denzil Holles' sister, was the one who made the effort for the reprieve, as I know from Sir Denzil," replied Ireton; "the King shook him off like an old cloak, as he would shake off any friend he thought was likely to be hurtful to him."

Harrison took up the theme with the greater vehemence of his low origin and coarse training, for though his noble appearance and military appointments gave him some of the appearance of that equality with his fellow-officers which he claimed by reason of his military rank, still, when he spoke, it was obvious that neither the levelling of war nor religion could do away with the distinctions of birth and education; Cromwell and Ireton were as clearly gentlemen as Harrison, the son of a butcher, was clearly not.

"What is dealing with the King but trafficking with Egypt," he concluded his peroration, "and setting up a covenant with the powers of darkness? Can good come from tinkling with such as Charles Stewart? Nay, rather a curse upon the land."

Oliver Cromwell took the pipe out of his mouth; he sat near the entrance to the tent, and the feeble moonlight was full over his rugged profile.

The one oil-lamp had burnt out, and the three soldiers either had not noticed, or were indifferent to the fact, that they were sitting in the half-dark.

"Shallow and frivolous he may be, nay, hath been proved to be," said Cromwell slowly. "But he is the King. Major Harrison, those words are as a tower of strength, as a wand of enchantment—there is the weight of seven hundred years or more to support them—and Charles, without one soldier, means more to England than you or I could ever mean were we backed by millions."

"During those seven hundred years you speak of," replied Harrison grimly, "there have been kings so detestable that means have been found to put them off their thrones. The thing is not without precedence."

"Nay, surely," said the Lieutenant-General gently; "but in the wars and quarrels of which you speak some rival prince was always there to take his kinsman's place. This is not a dispute among kings and nobles, but an uprising of the people for their liberty to force the King to grant them their just demands—therefore, the case is without precedent."

"And what, sir, do you deduct from that?" asked Henry Ireton.

"Why, that if we put the King down there is no one to set in his place. The Prince of Wales hath gone abroad to the French Court and a papist mother; the King's nephew, the Elector Charles Louis, who was flattered with some hopes of the succession, is a silly choice; the King's other sons are children, Rupert and Maurice are free lances—and which of these, were he ever so desirable, would be accepted by the nation while the King lives?"

There was a little pause, and then Harrison said boldly—

"Why need we a king at all?"

"It is a good form of government," replied Cromwell, "and I believe the only one the English will take. If you have no king you may have a worse thing—every shallow pate faction casts to the top seizing the direction of affairs. It was never the design of any of us," he added, "to depose the King when we took up arms."

"Nay," admitted Ireton, "the design was to bring him to reason, but how may that be done when we deal with one who knows not the name of reason?"

"Now," said the Lieutenant-General, "he has no power to be false. Nor will the Parliament ever again be as defenceless as it was when he was last at Whitehall."

"Then," put in Ireton shrewdly, "if you offer terms to the King which leave the power of the sword with the Parliament, you offer what he, even in his utmost extremity, will not accept."

"We have had no experience of what he will do in extremity," replied Cromwell, "since he has never come to it till now."

"But has he not," cried Harrison, "always refused to give up what he terms his rights? Did he not contemptuously reject the Uxbridge Treaty?"

"As any man might have guessed he would," replied Cromwell dryly; he had been no party to the folly of the Presbyterians in asking the King to accept these impossible conditions. "He will always be a Prelatist, yet he might—nay, he must—rule according to the laws of England, and allow all men freedom in their thoughts."

"He never will!" exclaimed Harrison.

"He must," repeated Cromwell.

His pipe had now gone out; he knocked out the ashes against the tent pole and rose.

"The settlement of this war," remarked Henry Ireton, "is like to be more trouble than the fighting of it."

"What," asked Cromwell, with that half-moody, half-tender melancholy that so often marked his speech, "avail these doubts and surmises? It is but lost labour that ye haste to rise up so early and so late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness—'it is in the Lord's hands—the Lord's will be done.'"

Major Harrison rose also; he wore part of his armour; vambrace and cuirass clattered as he moved.

"Ay," he said, "worthy Mr. Hugh Peters did wrestle in prayer with the Lord for three hours on that point, and afterwards held forth in lovely words—yet were we still in darkness as to God's will with us——"

"Doubt not," answered Cromwell fervently, "that He will make it manifest as He hath done aforetime."

He paused in his pacing and turned to face the huge soldier, who now stood with one hand on the tent flap, holding it back.

The moon was sinking, a white wafer behind the gates and towers of Oxford, but the first flush of the dawn replaced her misty light.

"I look for the Lord!" cried Cromwell. "My soul doth wait for Him, in His word is my trust—'My soul fleeth unto the Lord, before the morning watch, I say before the morning watch!'"

"Ay," added Harrison, with a coarser enthusiasm and a blunter speech; "and when the Lord cometh what shall He say—but slay Dagon and his adherents, put to the sword the Amalekite and Edomite and all the brood of the Red Dragon. And who is the foremost of these but Charles Stewart?"

"The Lord," replied Cromwell, "hath not yet put it into my soul to put the King down, nor to utterly slight his authority. Yet on all these matters I would rather be silent—this is scarce the time for speech on this subject."

Major Harrison picked up his morion, which bore in front the single feather that denoted his rank, and with a few words of farewell left the tent.

Ireton prepared to follow him.

"A good repose, Harry," said Cromwell affectionately. "We have talked over long, and I fear to little purpose. We must come to these arguments again at Westminster. Get now some sleep—farewell."

When Henry Ireton had gone, Cromwell continued to walk up and down the worn turf that formed the floor of the tent.

"Ah, soul, my soul," he muttered, "art thou wandering again in blackness, not knowing which way to turn? Do the waters come in and overwhelm thee? Yet did not the Lord receive thee into His grace, and make with thee a Covenant and a promise? The sword of the Lord and Gideon!—has it not been given thee to wield that weapon, and to triumph with it? Was not the Lord's hand plainly shown in that they have felled the malignants as the bricks of Basing that fell down one from the other? And hast thou not permitted them to be utterly consumed from the land, even from Havilah unto Shur?"

While he thus exhorted and chided some inner weakness or sadness that was liable to come over him, most often at night, and when he was inactive, speaking aloud, as was his wont when thus excited, he was startled by the sudden entry of one of his officers.

The man was preceded by the soldier in attendance on Cromwell, who had kept guard outside his tent, and now carried a lantern, the strong beams of which, disturbing the dubious light of the tent, showed the figure of Cromwell standing by the camp-bed on which his armour was piled.

"Sir," began the officer, "we have made, outside the city, a prisoner, whom it is expedient Your Excellency should see."

"For what purpose, Colonel Parsons?" asked Cromwell wearily, and hanging his head on his breast, as he did when tired or thoughtful.

"Because the malignant, defying us, with much fury, did declare a strange thing. He said that the King had escaped from Oxford two days or so ago."

Cromwell looked up sharply; his face seemed full of shadows.

"Bring the prisoner before me," he said briefly, and seated himself on the leathern camp-chair at the foot of his rough couch.

The officer retired, and soon returned accompanied by two halberdiers escorting a young Cavalier, completely disarmed and dusty and disordered in his dress, as if he had made a fair struggle before surrendering his liberty.

"Thy name?" asked Cromwell.

"Charles Lucas," replied the young man.

"And what hast thou to say of this escape of the King from Oxford?"

The young man laughed.

"I may now freely tell thee, thou cunning rebel, that His Sacred Majesty is by now safe in the hands of his faithful Scots."

Cromwell scarcely repressed a violent start.

"He went from Oxford in the guise of a groom," continued Sir Charles, in a tone of amusement and triumph; "and I, for one, helped him."

"Even so?" said Cromwell, and gazed upon him absently.

"Shall I not," asked Colonel Parsons, "have the young malignant shot before the sun is up?"

The Lieutenant-General roused himself from deep thought with an effort.

"Nay, let him go," he said; "we want no more corpses nor prisoners."

Parsons, with the freedom the Independent officers took, remonstrated.

"He is a Socinian, a Prelatist, an Erastian—even as a soldier of Pekah or Jeroboam!"

"Let him go," repeated Cromwell, with his usual mildness, "it is now a matter of days. Spare all the blood you can, Colonel Parsons."

The dark red flushed the royalist's cheek.

"I want no mercy nor quarter from rebels," he said haughtily.

"Silly boy," smiled Cromwell, "take thy vaunts elsewhere," and Sir Charles, whether he would or no, was hustled out of the tent.

Cromwell sat motionless awhile, holding his hand before his eyes.

"The Scots," he was swiftly thinking, "what a turn is here ... he will not take the Covenant.... Then he is ours for the asking ... helpless any way ... the Scots!... Thou art an ill statesman, Charles Stewart.... Methinks the war is ended."