Weak and exhausted by constant marching, lack of food and sleep; dispirited by misfortune, and disfigured by mud and their torn and soiled attire; in the captives no one could have recognized the dashing cavaliers who passed northward a day or two before. They had all been deprived of their horses and arms, and been robbed of everything of value—their cuirasses, purses, rings, &c.—by their guard. De Ginckel was as brutal and merciless as a Carrib Indian, and repeatedly struck the unfortunate cavaliers with his speaking-trumpet.
"Ach Gott!" he often cried to his Ruyters; "if von ob de brisoners escape, ye shall answer for him, body for body, by cast ob dice on de kettle-trum-head!"
"My good comrades, and gallant gentlemen," said the Earl of Dunbarton to the little group that marched around him, "were it not that I feel in my heart assured that an hour of vengeance and retribution will come, I would die of sheer spleen and mortification, for the insults we are compelled to put up with."
"I pity these bluff-headed Saxon boors, because they know no better," replied Walter, staggering, as a stone struck him on the temple; "but De Ginckel——"
"My dear fellow," said Finland, bitterly, "'tis a sample of the good old southern hospitality and kindness of which we hear so much in romance, and so little in history."
"But," continued Walter, "I despise these poppy-headed Dutch poltroons in their black iron doublets, and would risk my share of Heaven to have De Ginckel under my hands on Scottish ground, with none to interfere, and no weapons but our rapiers and a case of good pistols."
"You speak my thoughts," said the Earl, through his clenched teeth. "My malediction on Langstone and his Red Dragoons. Had they and such as they been good men and true, we had not been reduced to this misfortune; and our misguided King, instead of being a houseless fugitive, had dwelt in Windsor still, where now the usurping Stadtholder keeps Court and Council. Sirs, of a verity we live in strange times!"
As they had now crossed the Nen, had left behind old Peterborough (with the hoary fane where St. Oswald's bony arm worked miracles of old), and were marching through the open country, being free from the yells and missiles of the mob, they could converse with tolerable freedom, though at times De Ginckel thundered silence through his trumpet, or a Swart Ruyter, more waggish or wickedly inclined than his soporific comrades, pushed his horse sidelong to tumble one of the captives among the half-frozen mud that encumbered the roadways. Their mortification and dejection increased at every step of their retrograde march, and even the lively sallies of Dr. Joram failed to enliven them.
The sombre evening was closing, when De Ginckel, with his Ruyters and their captives, after traversing the fenny district between Cambridge and Lincoln, came in sight of Huntingdon, where, as Dr. Joram remarked, "the devil's god-son, that prime rascal, old Noll, first drew breath." The dying light of the winter sun tipped the spires of the ancient town-hall and the church of All Saints, and glimmered on the sluggish windings of the Ouse. The prisoners were pursuing a lonely road; on one side lay a thick copsewood, and on the other one of those wide and desolate fens then subject to the inundations of the Ouse, whose waters in many places formed deep and solitary meres or tarns. Within the recesses of the wood, the quick eye of Walter had soon detected the glitter of arms, to which he drew the attention of the Earl.
"It matters not," replied the dejected noble, "no arms now glitter under James's standard; we are lost men, my dear lad. It will be black tidings for my little Lætitia, when the accursed Tower of London holds the last Lord of Dunbarton."