“‘Lie still,’ said Gabriel. ‘Here’s the cloak Lord Falkland gave me at Marlborough. We’ll wrap it about you.’
“Now at the word Marlborough, the face of the dying man changed, and he fell a-thinking.
“‘Say the words you said that night,’ he gasped.
“Gabriel, unable to think what he meant, said the first words that came to his mind:
“‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, for ever.’
“And after that the dying man lay in his arms fighting hard for breath, but never speaking, only once he gripped Gabriel’s hand and looked in his eyes, as though he would have thanked him. Then, as darkness fell on the blood-stained field, he passed away.”
“And what happened to my uncle Gabriel?” asked Mollie.
“The war ended not long after that, and he went to London, and studied for two years under Sir Theodore Mayerne, and then for two years more at Paris. In 1650 he settled finally in London, and there became a celebrated physician, and all went well with him. He had twenty years of happy wedded life, marred only by some trouble at the time of the Restoration for the part he had played in the Civil War. However, that was no very serious matter, and there were few happier homes in the country till the year of the Great Plague.
“Knowing that his duty lay with the poor sick folk in London, he parted from his wife and four children, sending them, as he hoped, out of all risk to Katterham, a country place some eighteen miles off. But it fell about that, as they halted at Croydon to bait the horses, some that were also flying from the plague, sat with them at the common table in the inn, and even as they dined one of these fellow-travellers was seized with illness. Spite of all precautions, my dear niece herself sickened the next day, and ere twenty-four hours had passed she and her children were dead.
“An old comrade, Sir Joscelyn Hey worth, travelled to London to break the news to his friend, who seemed for the time wholly crushed. But as they sat together talking very sadly, there came in Sir William Denham, who for many years had known them both.