“Major Locke?” asked Gabriel, looking anxiously at the surgeon’s face.
“’Twas too late,” he replied, gravely. “The Major drew his last breath just as we approached.”
Gabriel made a step or two forward in the direction of the chancel, then suddenly reeled and would have fallen to the ground had not the surgeon caught him.
“He hath swooned,” said Tarverfield; “and no wonder, after the way in which his muscles have been cramped all these hours.”
“With your leave he had best be carried to the vestry,” said the surgeon, and, lighted by the Irishman, they carried the lieutenant out of the church.
Falkland, with a sigh, picked up the lantern and walked slowly on, glancing now and then into the high pews where lay the wretched prisoners, roped in couples, and most of them sleeping from sheer fatigue, in spite of hunger and discomfort. Reaching the chancel, he paused for some minutes beside the body of the Major. The dead face, with its majestic calm and its strange smile, contrasted curiously with the faces of the sleeping prisoners.
“Happy man!” murmured Falkland. “He is free, and has died for what he deemed his country’s good, like my old friend John Hampden.” Then, with a deep sigh that was almost a groan, he passed on, breathing the cry that was ever now in his heart, and often on his lips, “Peace! peace!”
When he entered the vestry he found that the leech had dressed the wounds on Gabriel’s wrists, but had not yet succeeded in reviving the prisoner.
“’Tis food the poor fellow stands in need of,” said Tarver-field. “I can testify that he has had nothing since sunrise yesterday, and doubtless little enough since early the day before, for Waller was too busy preparing to attack Devizes.”
“With your permission, my lord, I will fetch him food from my own house,” said the surgeon, who, like most of the inhabitants of Marlborough, sympathised with the Parliament. Indeed, since many of the houses had been burnt and plundered in December by the Royalists, and the town had been constantly harassed on market days by bodies of plundering Cavaliers from Oxford, it was natural enough that the feeling was all in favour of the prisoners and against Prince Maurice’s men.