“No, but ’twas well known that he ever counsels the King to make peace and, like all peacemakers, he is misunderstood and miscalled a coward; therefore, no doubt, he loses no chance to give the lie to those that taunt him, by throwing himself fearlessly into an unnecessary peril. Never has man been in harder case, for he is disliked now by both parties, and very scurvily treated, they say, by the King, who doth not like his plain-speaking and his scrupulous truthfulness.” “Why did he ever desert the Parliamentary cause to which he was once true?” said Gabriel. “Colonel Hampden, who hath a great regard for him, says that he distrusted Archbishop Laud’s teaching and his narrow intolerance, but dreaded the narrowness of the extreme Puritans even worse. Being thus in a strait betwixt two parties he, to Colonel Hampden’s great sorrow, cast in his lot with our opponents.” “May God keep us from all evil passion in our fighting and make us as merciful foes as Lord Falkland has proved,” said Gabriel, sorely perplexed in his mind as he recalled the fiery spirit which had possessed him after he had seen the ghastly death-wound of his Scottish comrade. With what a strange, fierce joy he had hurled himself and his steed against the Royalist pikes, and with what burning heat the blood had coursed through his veins! Yet now the mere remembrance of the awful sights he had seen turned him positively faint. Joscelyn Heyworth made him take some of Tibbie’s strongest cordial. “I am but an ill nurse,” he said, “and have let you talk over much. Remember that the noblest men on both sides have tried their very utmost for years to settle matters peacefully; this is a last stand for freedom and truth against kingly despotism which, in the end, would leave England a prey to Rome, for the King is ruled by the Queen, and the Queen is ruled by her confessor.” Gabriel remembered the dead Scotsman’s words, and they rang in his ear in very comforting fashion as at last he fell asleep. His rescuer watched him thoughtfully. He had spoken of his home and his parents, clearly the war had not robbed him of them; it must, then, be some yet dearer tie that had been severed. And long before the morning dawned Joscelyn knew practically the whole story, for all through the night the feverish wanderings of the wounded man took the form of last interviews and broken-hearted partings with a maiden named “Hilary,” who refused to remain betrothed to one she thought a rebel and a traitor. CHAPTER XI. Love doth unite and knit, both make and keep Things one together, which were otherwise, Or would be both diverse and distant. --Christopher Harvey.