With great enjoyment he noted the spasm of pain that passed over his captive’s face as he reluctantly obeyed. Then, signing to one of his men to come forward, the Colonel gave sharp and peremptory orders:
“Strip the prisoner.”
And in a minute the man had robbed Gabriel of helmet and gorget, buff coat and vest.
“Stay,” said Captain Tarverfield, who had watched with some compunction the prisoner’s keen suffering under this degradation. “Though it is lawful to strip an officer Colonel, you would surely leave the preacher his shirt to serve as surplice.” Norton laughed, gaily.
“True. And since he is so devoted a friend to Major Locke we will rope them together, the one mounted and the other afoot. And you had better keep up the pace, Mr. Harford, or your own horse will kick you on.”
The prisoner, by a supreme effort, stifled a smart retort, and began to consider how best to spare the Major when they were bound together. By the time the cavalcade moved forward again the rosy glow of sunrise was making the whole countryside beautiful, and in the sore battle that Gabriel was waging with his own nature—in the manly effort to bring his own character and conduct into accord with the high ideal he held, the sight of the rising sun brought him no small comfort. None knew better than a single-hearted Puritan how to wage that strenuous inner warfare which makes men truly great, and the conflict was to Gabriel as real as any visible struggle. As he marched now he fought as he had done on many a battle-field to the well-known battle psalm:
Let God arise, and scattered
Let all His en’mies be;
And let all those that do Him hate
Before His presence flee.