In a low chamber of a lonely dwelling, close to the outposts of the enemy—looking down, indeed, upon the glacis and the dry moat of the town—there sat an aged man, shivering above the last expiring embers of his last brand—it was the last small fragment of the door, that dying brand! All else, the floor, the furniture, the casements, had been consumed already. Upon the hearth, beside the embers, there stood a mug of water, and a large dish, covered with thrice gnawed bones, part of a horse’s ribs, clean picked and broken, so as to reach the marrow. He was a tall and stately figure, was that aged man, and he had been strong, sinewy and vigorous even in his old age; but now his form was bent and all his limbs contracted; the skin, yellow as parchment, was drawn tight across his withered brow; his nose was terribly, unnaturally sharpened, like the nose of a corpse; his eye was dim and lustreless; his ashy lips were glued together with a thin frothy slaver. Yet he had fought that morning in a fierce skirmish, which had well-nigh brought in a drove of cattle, and had been only driven back by a charge of the ironsides, a troop of which, commanded, too, by his own son, had fallen upon their flank, and borne them back into the town when confident of victory and full of high anticipation. His corslet and buff coat were not yet laid aside; his plumed hat was cast listlessly beside him on the ground, but his blue baldric still sustained his rapier, spotted with many blood gouts, and, in the buff belt round his waist, his pistols, with the hammers down and the pans black with smoke, showed that he had not removed them since he had thrust them back into his girdle, just fired in the heat of action. There he sat, with his hands clenched and his teeth hard set, _silent_, yet cursing in his heart that recreant son, whom he had never forgiven—no! never for one moment’s space!—that he had joined the Parliament against the King, and on whose head he now invoked the direst of calamities, that, by his too successful charge, he had cut off the last relief from that sad starving city. Suddenly a faint sound fell on his ear, as of one clambering up the glacis. The old man listened, acutely, breathlessly, as though life were dependant on his sense of hearing!—again it came, clearer and louder, _nearer_ than before. Sword in hand, on the instant the veteran sprang to the narrow casement which overlooked the moat and glacis, and there, scarce three feet from the window, in the steel cap and corslet, the scarlet cassock and unshapely boots of Cromwell’s Ironsides, stood a tall, slender figure. The moon, which was dimly wading through the uncertain clouds, feebly defined the outlines of his form, and half revealed, as the old man fancied, the shapes and weapons of a score or two of his fanatical companions in the dark hollow of the moat below him.