"Alas! Your Majesty must speak with this Captain of Irish yourself," said the gentleman, in dismay. "He saith Leslie fell on the noble Marquess near Selkirk, and did utterly defeat and overwhelm him; it was at Philiphaugh, sir—and all the Scottish clans were broken and the Marquess is fled."
Newcastle gave an exclamation of bitter grief and rage. Charles stood silent a full minute, then said in a low voice—
"The Marquess is not taken?"
"Not that this Captain knoweth——"
"Then we have some mercy," said the King, with a proud tenderness infinitely winning. "My dear lord, what bitterness is thine to-day! Alas! Alas!"
Digby, with tears in his eyes, took the dispatch and gave it to the King, hoping that it might contain news that would soften the bitterness of Montrose's overthrow.
But for a while the King, struggling with his stinging disappointment and mortification, could not read, and when he did break the seals it was with a distracted air.
The very heading of the paper brought the hot blood to his pallid cheeks: it was not "Bristol," but "Oxford."
The Prince wrote laconically to say he had surrendered Bristol to Fairfax and Cromwell, and had gone under parliamentary convoy to Oxford.