bridled the bold valor of the West Riding, as he had boasted that he would—bridled it with a curb of iron! Yet Knaresborough still held out!—castle and town held out, though worn and wasted with fatigue and famine. Hastily had the brave defenders thrown themselves into that stronghold, scantily victualled as it was, expecting succors from without, as it were, every hour, and prepared desperately to endure the utmost before submission to their hated foes. Hastily, rashly had they suffered themselves to be hemmed in, without a hope except to die, and desperately had they borne up against the tortures which had rewarded that hot rashness. And now the moment had arrived. For three whole days, the castle and the town had had no food at all! All stores had, many days since, been exhausted; the very grass that grew upon the ramparts had been all gathered, all consumed! The beasts of burthen, the domestic animals, the very vermin, had been sought eagerly for food—had been devoured greedily—till no more could be found at all in that most miserable town. There was not one house but had lost some of its inmates, by that most lingering, most terrible of deaths, mere famine!—and it was on the youngest, the fairest, the loveliest, the most beloved, that the dread doom fell first. The streets were heaped with carcasses, for now the living lacked the strength, the energy, to bury their own dead! Thrice had the burghers risen against the castle, to force its commandant, by surrendering to the Puritans, to free them from that lamentable durance; and thrice had the gray-headed cavalier, who held that last stronghold for an unthankful monarch—while the tears streamed hot and heavy down his emaciated cheeks, and his heart throbbed as if it would burst his bosom, for very pity—ordered the castle guns to play with grape upon the famished wretches, whose despair would have forced him from his duty. Three times, repulsed from the castle by their friends, had that most hapless populace rushed out to the besieger’s camp, throwing themselves upon the mercy of their foes, and hoping so to force their way into the open country, and three times, at pike’s point, had they been driven back into that town of sepulchres and charnel houses. It was the third day that no particle of food, except some scraps of leather, roasted or sodden into soup, had passed the lips of any of the garrison, on which a sad deputation of the townsmen waited for the fourth time upon the captain of the castle. They came not now in turbulence, hoping to _force_ submission, but tearfully and on their bended knees, to beg that stern old veteran, as they deemed him, that for the love of God, by all his hopes of Heaven, he would have mercy _not_ on them, they said, “for we are men, and can endure the utmost, but for our wives, our perishing wives and children!”