“Now will this sparer of crosses join in a psalm with the godly,” he reflected, wrathfully. “Let his days be few! Even in the midst of his sin shall he be stricken!”
Little dreaming that one of his worst foes stood close behind him, Gabriel joined with rather a heavy heart in the psalm which seemed to haunt him at every crisis in his life. Standing now in the street at Ledbury with the manly voices of the soldiers ringing out into the night, he remembered how the same words
In trouble and adversity
The Lord God hear thee still
had strengthened him as he stood waiting for the first attack at Edgehill; how in the Cathedral long ago with his eyes on Hilary’s pale face, the same words had fallen on his ears, and how in the porch at Bosbury the psalm had on this very day been to them a bond of union. No thought of personal danger came to him now, though Waghorn’s cloak brushed his sleeve. It was of Hilary he thought, and of the peril that threatened her.
At the close of the psalm the bugle sounded the “Last post,” and such of the men as had quarters marched off; those who were to bivouac in the street scattering into groups about the market-house, and a detachment moving torch in hand to the upper end of the town where four ways met.
Massey invited Gabriel and Captain Bayly to have a cup of mulled claret with him at the “Feathers.”
“Well, sir, if you will pardon me,” said Gabriel, who longed to be alone, “I will ask to be excused. Truth to tell, I am dog-tired, and would fain sleep.”
Massey slapped him on the shoulder with a laugh.
“Art sick, or in love? Eh? Beshrew me, but I believe you did leave your heart at Bosbury to-day. I’ll be with you anon, Bayly.”