No Quarter! - Mayne Reid

Wedded they were, and their names entered in the big book of marriage registry; from which the writer does not deem it necessary to copy them verbatim. Enough to give them as already known to the reader; the brides being Sabrina and Vaga Powell, Winifred, and Gwenthian; their respective bridegrooms Colonel Sir Richard Walwyn, Captain Eustace Trevor, Sergeant Wilde, and Trumpeter Hubert.

While being made happy, amid the many joyous faces around, one alone wore a cast of sadness, yet with resignation—that of Reginald Trevor, still living. For the shot which struck him out of his saddle on the flooded causeway of Framilode had but wounded him, and he was well again. In body, not spirit; for within his heart was a wound that might never be well. He had suffered bitterly, was still suffering; but with soul now purified and subdued was better able to bear it, and bore it manfully. Generously too; for just as, when meeting his cousin outside Hollymead gate he had offered him his sword to avenge defeat, now honoured he him by his presence at a ceremony which was as the sacrifice of himself.

Still another incident calls for record: of date some six years later, and some months preceding that event which again brought England’s liberty to its lowest ebb, her glory to greatest shame—the so-called Restoration. Before this curse of curses came, Ambrose Powell, predicting it—foreseeing evil to him and his—gathered up his household gods, and took ship with them to the colonies across the Atlantic, accompanied by all the personages who had appeared at that marriage ceremony in the cathedral of Gloucester, and by many more—Cadger Jack among them.

Reginald Trevor, too, was of the colonising band; long become accustomed to bearing the broken heart, which “brokenly lives on,” with but little pain, growing ever less. For he could now look upon Vaga Powell as his cousin’s wife; to himself as a kind sister—almost without thought of the unhappy past.

Well was it for all of them they went away, to become part of that people, the freest, most powerful, and most prosperous on earth. Had they stayed, it would have been to suffer persecution; the fate of all who then fought for England’s freedom, save the false ones and cravens, who cried “Quarter!”—on their knees, basely begged it from that loathsome monster of iniquity—the “Merry Monarch.”

And Rupert, Prince of Cavaliers, what became of him? He too returned with the Restoration—another of its curses—fresh from a long career of piracy in the West Indian seas, to be made Lord High Admiral of England, with no end of other honours and emoluments heaped upon him! To live for years after a life of luxurious ease, die “in the purple,” and be buried with all pomp and ceremony. For though a pirate, he was still a Prince of the Blood Royal!

The End.