because thought impassable, a little troop of gentlemen, superbly mounted on high blooded chargers, fluttering with lace and waving with tall plumes and blue embroidered scarfs, would dash upon some picquet of the Puritans, and drive them back, scattered and broken and cut down, to the main body; and then, forced to retreat in turn, would fall back foot by foot, firing their petronels and musquetoons from every hedge and coppice, and charging again and again on their pursuers from every spot of vantage, till they had gained the river; then they would wheel, throw in one shattering volley, swim through the eddying waters, and raise their gallant cheer, “God for King Charles!” in safety. Now it would be a steadier and sterner effort; a heavy column would rush out, pikemen and musqueteers and horse in one dense body, bearing the outposts in at the pike’s point, carrying some redoubt, and then deploying in its front, until their pioneers and axemen should spike its guns, fill up its ditches, and level its defences to the ground. Incessant were alarms and panics, sallies and feints and false attacks on the one hand; and, on the other, strict watches, stout resistance, guarded and sure approaches, for Lilburne knew right well the quality of his own troops—the nature of the force opposed to him. He had experienced often in the field the fiery and resistless charges of the impetuous cavaliers; he knew that in the stoutest veterans of the Parliament, none could be found who, for a single dash, could cope with the high-born and chivalrous adherents of the King; but he knew also that undisciplined and fiery gentlemen, how gallant and how desperate soever, would not endure the tedium of protracted operations, the dull monotony of a long siege, where passive opposition only can be offered, the lack of wine and the appliances of mirth, the scarcity of food, the daily sufferings, the daily waste, the daily growing anguish. He knew, and acted on this knowledge. Vastly superior in his numbers, he cared not for the loss of a picquet; he shook not at the defeat of an outpost, the destruction of a redoubt, or the success of a sally. If evening saw the line of his circumvallation broken, the morning sun beheld his working parties on the ground repairing the defences, protected by so powerful masses that any sally must be fruitless to annoy them, and evening found the lines again complete, but stronger, nearer, closer than before. Nor was this all. With his strong cavalry, he kept the country round in constant terror and excitement; he cut off every convoy, before it well had left the place from which it started; he surprised every stronghold of the cavaliers, at miles away from his scene of operations; he took and garrisoned the loyal house of Ripley; he battered Spofforth Castle, the old, time-honored dwelling of the Percies; he quelled the risings of the Langdales, the Vavasours, the Slingsbys and the Stourtons. He indeed