The look of pity died from the Puritan's expressive face.
"He who holdeth Basing House against us? That Winchester?" he cried grimly. "Art thou, as he, Papists?"
"Your tongue doth call us that," she replied faintly.
"Ha!" cried Cromwell, "must I then succour the children of filth and abomination, the brood of the Scarlet Women, whose bones I have declared shall whiten the valley of Hinnom and whose dust I promised to cast into the brook of Kedar?"
The lady pressed to her husband's side.
"God's will be done," she said in despair; "even in this pass I cannot deny my God nor my King."
The two soldiers who had lifted the Cavalier paused with their burden, expecting that the General would order both Papists to a common prison.
And such, indeed, was for a moment his intention, for no man was more hated by him than Lord Winchester, who had, since the beginning of the war, defied the Parliamentarians from Basing House.
But as he was about to speak he glanced down at the face of the unconscious man, and a shudder shook him.