‘Fear not; your men will answer to your call.’
‘I do not fear. They are brave fellows. Yet—to think that their blood must be spilt!’
‘There spoke Lord Chester of the past, not the gallant Prince of the present. Why, what if a few hundreds of dead men strew this field to-morrow provided the Right prevails? Of what good is a man’s life to him, if he does not give it for the sacred cause? To give a life—why, it is to lend a thing; to hasten the slow course of time; to make the soul take at a single leap the immortality which comes to others so slowly. Fear not for the blood of martyrs, my lord.’
‘You always cheer and comfort me, Professor.’
‘It is because I am a woman,’ she replied. ‘Let me fulfil the highest function of my sex.’
They were interrupted by an aide-de-camp, who came galloping across the Heath.
‘From Captain Dunquerque, my lord,’ he began. ‘The Convict Wardens are encamped in force in Hyde Park; they number ten thousand, and have got thirty guns; they march to-morrow morning.’
‘Very good,’ said the Chief; and the young officer fell back.
‘Ten thousand strong!’ said the Professor. ‘Then they have left the prisons almost without a guard. When these are dispersed, where will they find a new army? They are delivered into your hands.’
Hampstead Heath may be approached by two or three roads: there is the direct road up Haverstock Hill; or there is the way by the Gospel Oak and the Vale of Health; or, again, there is the road from the north, or that from Highgate. But the way by which the Convict Wardens would march from Hyde Park was most certainly that of Haverstock Hill; and they would emerge upon the Heath by one of the narrow roads known as Holly Hill, Heath Street, and the Grove,—probably by all three. Or they might attempt the upper part of the Heath by the Vale of Health.