"It is not my design to drink or sleep," he answered, "but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."
All through the windy night he prayed brokenly; once he spoke of Harrison, and seemed troubled; once he asked God to spare Betty further pain, and again he said, "Is Robert dead?—and Oliver?"
When the sun was up over city and golden river, and the vast crowds waiting anxiously, His Highness had fallen to silence.
Neither to the God who waited for him, nor to his forlorn family, nor to the breathless nation did His Highness speak again in any earthly tongue.
That afternoon the Lord ungirt the sword with which He had invested his Captain twenty years before, and in Whitehall Palace Oliver Cromwell's lifeless body lay—and the nation flew asunder into confusion.
"My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.
"But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever—and Thy remembrance throughout all generations....
"They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as doth a garment.
"And as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." Amen. Amen.
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh