“I will ride back and send the best surgeon in Bath to wait upon him,” said Gabriel, longing to stay and search for his friend Joscelyn Heyworth, who must be lying somewhere on the hillside, though whether dead or wounded he could not tell. But his duty was to ride back to Waller with Hopton’s message, and personal wishes had to be stifled.
“Should Sir Ralph recover I shall tell him he owes his life to you, for assuredly he would have bled to death had it not been for your promptitude,” said Captain Nevill, warmly. “Doth he know your name?”
“Yes, sir, ’tis Gabriel Harford. Farewell, and may God preserve your leader.”
Then, remounting his horse at the too of the hill, he galloped along the Lansdown ridge, making all speed back to Sir William Waller, that help might be sent as soon as possible to those tortured soldiers, whose groans still rang in his ears.
The horrors of the campaign made his heart ache, yet if ever war was unavoidable he honestly believed that it was this war, which had only been undertaken after years of patient endeavour to combat by peaceful means the King’s misrule. Again and again, moreover, the disputants had paused during the hostilities and had tried to come to a peaceful settlement, but the fatal bar of the King’s insincerity and the repeated discovery of his underhand dealings while negotiations for peace were yet going on had always frustrated the hopes of the distracted country.
Gabriel was ready and willing to lay down his life for the freedom of England and the preservation of the Reformed religion. The recent death of John Hampden the Patriot, had, indeed, filled him with renewed eagerness to sacrifice everything for the cause. And, at the same time, he could not but feel, as his friend Joscelyn Hey worth had felt after the return from Chalgrove Field, a burning desire to call to account the main authors of all this woe. His Majesty and the Archbishop might personally be well-meaning men, but their tyrannical government had filled him with loathing, and he grieved to think of the thousands of homes which their policy had blighted. For Sir Bevil Granville and for the brave Cornishmen who had fallen on the previous day he could only feel admiration, but he would gladly have had in their stead those he deemed the cause of all the misery—the hard and aggressive Dr. Laud and the weak and untrustworthy King.
CHAPTER XVII.
They say it was a shocking sight,