A few days before the battle, a troop of Rupert’s horse was holding the village of Bullenham, and, with wild riot and plunder, terrifying the hearts of the farmers and their wives. The post was of some importance, for it lay just half-way between Harborough, where King Charles was staying, and that wide moorland on which the Parliamentary army was manœuvring. Nearly the whole of the Royalist soldiers passed through Bullenham, so that the villagers saw enough and to spare of the pomp and circumstance of war. The young officer who commanded the cavalry troop quartered in the village was named Henry Melford, and he had established himself in a small farmhouse. The household consisted of the farmer and his wife and one daughter, their only child. Captain Melford was not a rough soldier, but a refined man, accustomed to good society. At the same time, he had a delightfully frank manner, quick sympathies, and a homely naturalness and power of adaptation which went far to reconcile Dame Dimbell to the invasion of her household privacies and the subversion of all her established hours and methods. Her husband’s talk was of oxen, and he took little interest in the questions that were then riving society to its centre. A stolid, characterless man, he rose with the dawn to go through his placid routine of occupations, and smoked his pipe in the chimney in the evening. The outdoor work of his small farm he managed almost entirely himself, while his wife and neat-handed daughter reigned inside the threshold. Barbara was a bright, plump, merry creature, who sang old ballads from morning till night, save when a snatch of some favourite church anthem broke in graver notes from her lips. She had lived in unwonted excitement since the soldiers had entered the village, and what mischief might have come about had she been allowed to yield to her own coquettish impulses it is hard to say. But Captain Melford had none of the licentiousness which characterised many of the Royalist soldiers: he had indeed something of the chivalrous purity of an olden knight, and he had not only warned Barbara against possible danger, but had made it well understood that the maiden was not to be approached by the soldiers. Consequently, the pretty damsel was comparatively safe; and honest John Sprayby, who for a year or two had been hovering about her, was not likely to be discarded for some bolder and lighter wooer. One evening, after Captain Melford had received the reports of his sergeant, and had given orders for the various watches to be kept during the night, he began to take his ease in the spacious farm kitchen. The table was spread for supper, and he sat down to do hearty justice to the homely old English fare.