Having thus done justice to his General, the Puritan endeavoured to do justice to his soldiers, and to give a timely warning to the Presbyterians. He dipped his quill into the ink-dish and added, with a firm hand and a bent brow, frowning—
"Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them.
"I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it.
"He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for.
"In this he rests, who is your most humble servant,
"Oliver Cromwell"
As he dried and sealed up his letter, the soldier, whose ears, though deaf to the nightingale and the lift of the wind in the trees without, were keen enough for all practical sounds, heard a certain tumult or commotion which seemed to be in the house and almost at his very door.
With the instinct that the last few years had bred in him, he put his hand to his tuck sword and shifted it farther round his thigh, then, taking up the standing candlestick, he hastily crossed to the door and opened it. A little group of soldiers were gathered round the front entrance to the house, which stood wide open, and Cromwell joined them, casting the rays of his two candles over a scene that had hitherto been illumined only by the pale trembling light of the rising moon.
A small, white, tired horse stood at the steps of the house, his head hanging down to his feet; at his bridle was a woman, a dark scarf about her shoulders, the slack reins in her hand, and on his back hung a man who had fallen forward on his neck, almost, if not quite, unconscious.
The woman, with the moonlight on her face, was speaking to the soldiers in a tone at once imperious and desperate, and from all parts of the garden a mingled crowd was approaching to ascertain the cause of this supplication at the gate of the General's house.