The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, both on horseback, and a third on foot, with musquetoon on shoulder. The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till he was struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they would set spurs and flee away like the wind—a calm, silent, but irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he will have his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!
I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be impossible and others unlawful.
The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap.
'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms upon you.'
'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.'
'I do not know who does like them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being 'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of a shoulder-strap! You must belong to the army!'
It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the effort to eject the intruder instantaneously!
'Good God! Off with it—quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost sinking to the ground as he spoke.
Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite a moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and broken:
'Is it gone?'