The hours passed slowly by, and at length early in the afternoon he was roused by the approach of quick footsteps. “Sir, sir,” cried Captain Nevill, eagerly, “we are, I trust, saved. Prince Maurice hath returned from Oxford bringing fresh troops under my Lord Wilmot. They are massed on Roundway Down.” “Massed where?” cried Hopton, still somewhat deaf from his accident. “A mile off, on Roundway Down,” shouted Captain Nevill. “Then, for the time, Devizes is saved,” said Hopton, with a sigh of relief, “for Sir William Waller will assuredly draw off his troops and give the Prince battle at the foot of the down.” Such, indeed was Waller’s intention, but his plans were frustrated by the over-eagerness of his friend, Sir Arthur Hazlerigg. Remembering the gallant behaviour of the “Lobsters” at Lansdown and the terror they had struck into the hearts of the Royalists, he charged gallantly, but rashly, up the slippery and precipitous hill. The Royalists bore down upon them with crushing force, and, to the dismay of Waller and his troops on the plain below, the whole regiment thus sharply repulsed tore frantically down the hill. It was the most appalling sight Gabriel had ever seen; the maddened horses, forced down perilous heights “where never horse went down or up before,” fell by scores, crushing their riders, and, to his horror, he saw his friend Major Locke first wounded in the thigh by a musket ball, and then thrown headlong to the ground with his horse on the top of him. The sight of this was more than he could endure, for he knew only too well the horrible agony the Major would undergo. Receiving a word of permission from Waller, he set spurs to his horse, and rode in hot haste to the rescue, hoping to bring his friend to shelter. But by the time he had dragged him from beneath the horse and had contrived to lift him on to his own beast, he found, to his utter dismay, that the whole of Waller’s cavalry had been put to flight. The terrible sight of the destruction of Hazlerigg’s regiment had filled the men with panic, and, seeing that they were hemmed in on the side of Devizes by Hopton’s steadily advancing Cornishmen, they broke and fled in the wildest disorder. To rejoin his routed comrades was for the present impossible; already they were riding pell-mell back to the west, hotly pursued by the Royalists, and all he could do was to try to find some sort of shelter for his wounded friend. Leading his horse cautiously along the side of the down, and supporting the Major as well as he could in the saddle, he gradually drew off from the scene of the disaster. At any moment, as he well knew, they might be seen by the enemy and shot down; but at length, thanks to the general absorption in the pursuit, he succeeded in gaining a little hollow scooped out of the hillside, where, sheltered by a few stunted trees he had the good fortune to find one of the rude huts used by shepherds in the lambing season.