The small town of Beverley was as full as it could hold. It does not, indeed, seem at any time well calculated to hold a great many; but it is wonderful how elastic towns and even houses are when the inhabitants have a good mind to make room for others. It was, or seemed to be, as full as it could hold, however, as I have said, when about noon a body of some three hundred horse, followed at the distance of a quarter of a mile by a mixed troop of gentlemen and ladies, with a small party escorting some thirty-five or forty prisoners and two or three wagons, entered the place and marched up the principal street. A number of gay Cavaliers were lounging about at the doors of inns and private houses; some companies of train-bands were seen in the more open spaces, and guards appeared at the doors of the town-house, from the windows of which several heads were leaning forth, gazing listlessly upon the scene below. All was gay and pleasant confusion; for the party of the parliament took care to keep out of sight, and the royalists, exulting in the arrival of the king, were doing their best to show a hearty welcome to his court. Though somewhat less than two thousand cavalry, and a small infantry force, consisting entirely of train-bands, with half-a-dozen light pieces of artillery, certainly did not show much like an army, yet hope and excitement magnified the numbers; and the good townsmen of Beverley, as they reckoned up, with the exaggerating powers of imagination, more noblemen than they had ever seen in the parish before, and calculated the troop which each could bring into the field if he were willing, never doubted that, if the king had been so pleased, he might have brought a much larger host to the siege of Hull, and believed that many more would actually follow. In this supposition, indeed, they were encouraged by a number of houses being already marked out as quarters for different persons who had not yet appeared. Amongst the rest, a handsome brick building, in a garden, on the side of Hull, had been assigned to the expected party of Lord Walton; and as soon as the head of the troop I have mentioned appeared, a man who had been waiting by the side of a saddled horse, at the door of the town-house, sprang into the saddle, and riding up to the commanding officer--our old friend Major Randal--informed him of the direction he was to take. This old officer halted his men to let the party behind come up, and two or three gentlemen on foot advanced and spoke with him for a moment or two, while such exclamations as--"Indeed burned to the ground do you say?" "What! Langley Hall burned down? I saw a light over that way as I was marching. About nine, was it not?"--were heard as they conversed.