"How goes it with you, Ralph?" I exclaimed, wringing my friend's hand.
"Passably," he replied, "though 'tis but the fortune of war."
"I heard of your father's gallant end."
"Ay. My father and twenty-two of our tenantry fell before Waller's pikes, and now I have just heard that our house at Tregetty has been burnt to the ground, so nothing remains but my sword."
I hardly knew what to reply. For all I knew I might even now be in a similar position. Ashley Castle might be razed to the ground, and my parents dead beneath its ruins. It was, as Ralph had observed, the fortune of war, and we had but to look around and see the devastating effects of this struggle, in which Englishmen were flying at each other's throats.
Further conversation was interrupted by the trumpets sounding the assembly, and, mounting our chargers—two passable horses which had belonged to two cavaliers who had fallen in the charge on Lostwithiel Bridge—Firestone and I took our places in the ranks of our new comrades, Granville being my left-hand man.
Everyone was in high spirits, for the articles of capitulation had been accepted by the rebels, and we were even now on our way to witness the surrender of the Parliamentary army of the west.
Other regiments had preceded us, and by the time we crossed the old bridge once more, this time in the midst of a troop of horse with standards flying, and not as prisoners in the centre of a body of sour-faced Roundheads, the greater part of the King's army was drawn up in a long double line.
Our troop formed up facing the church, and as I looked up at the smoke-blackened tower and shattered roof I could not help wondering how near we had been to death, and how Providence had safely guided us through perils innumerable.
My reveries were cut short by a roll of drums, followed by a hoarse order, which was taken up all along the double line by the company commanders. Instantly the swords of the cavalry flew from their scabbards, while the pikemen stood to their pikes and musketeers shouldered their pieces.