"The General dines with the Speaker," said Mrs. Cromwell; and she was herself about to say grace when Doctor Verity entered. He was greeted with a chorus of welcomes, and readily took his seat at the foot of the table and spoke the few words of grateful prayer which sweetened and blessed every Puritan meal. Then in answer to some remark about Cromwell's absence he said,
"The Lord General is much troubled about the Worcester prisoners. There has just been a pitiful kind of triumph made out of their miseries. I don't approve of it, not I, God forbid! They have been made a spectacle for men and angels, marched from Hampstead Heath, through Aldgate, Cheapside, and the Strand, to Westminster—hungry, beggarly creatures, many of them wounded, and nearly naked."
"Poor fellows," said Mrs. Cromwell.
"Sturdy, surly fellows, madame. I don't envy the men who will have to manage them as slaves."
"They go to the Barbadoes, I hear?"
"Yes,—it is Scotland no more for them."
"Is that right, Doctor?"
"Indeed, madame, I am not clear in my conscience concerning the matter. It is the liberty of war. The Lord General has given two or three prisoners to each of his friends and entertainers between here and Worcester. However, the miserable fellows brought some comfort out of their evil plight, for the citizens along all the route forgot they were enemies, and the women fed them with the best of victuals, and the men stepped from their shop doors and put money in their hands. I'll be bound the rogues got more money and good white bread this morning than they have seen in all their lives before. Besides which, there is, in the Exchange and in the ale-houses, a box for the poor prisoners, and whenever men make a bargain they drop a God's-penny into it for them. That's Englishmen all over; they fight to the death in fair battle, but when their foe is at their feet they lift him up and help him and forget that he was ever their enemy. And may God keep Englishmen ever in such mind!"
"Indeed," said Mary Cromwell, "these Scots have given us trouble and sorrow enough. They ought to be sent out of the country, or out of the world, and that at once!"
"That is my opinion," said Mrs. Ireton. "Our brave men are being slain, and the country is torn asunder for their malignancy."