Mary gave him her hand, turned from him, and went into the house; and he let her go—her of whom the sight must have been to him as that of an angel—he let her go without an effort to stay her, even to prolong the sight. His horses were waiting, and one of his servants would follow with his mails; he mounted and rode away. The sun had set in a cloud, and the autumn evening was dark and gloomy, yet he rode along without any appearance of depression, steadily and quietly, like a man going about some business he has long expected to perform. I cannot even say he was sad: that moment had come to him which from his boyhood he had looked forward to. Now at last he could prove, at any rate to himself, that he was equal to that effort which it had been his ideal to attempt. When Inglesant reached Oxford he sought out the Jesuit and found him alone. The royal affairs were at the lowest ebb. Since the battle of Naseby the King had done little but wander about like a fugitive. He was now at Oxford; but it was doubtful whether he could stay there in safety through the winter, and certainly he would not be able to do so after the campaign began, unless some change in his fortunes meanwhile occurred. All this Inglesant knew only too well. The ruin of the royal cause, entailing his own ruin and that of all his friends, was too palpable to need description. The Jesuit therefore at once proceeded to the means which were prepared to remedy this disastrous state of things. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, had, with the consent of the King, concluded a truce with the Irish, who, after long years of oppression, spoliation and misery, had, a few years before, broken out suddenly in rebellion, and massacred hundreds of the unprepared Protestants, men, women, and children, under circumstances, as is admitted by Catholics, and is perhaps scarcely to be wondered at, of frightful cruelty. A feeling of intense hatred and dread of these rebels had consequently filled the minds of the English Protestants, both Royalists and Parliamentarians; a feeling in which horror at murderous savages—for as such they not unnaturally regarded the Irish—was united with the old hatred and fear of popish massacres and cruelties. The Parliament had remonstrated with the King for his supineness in not concluding the war by the extirpation of these monsters, and when at last a truce was concluded with them, the anger of the Parliament knew no bounds, and even loyal Churchmen, although they acknowledged the hard necessity which obliged the King to such a step, yet lamented it as one of the severest misfortunes which had befallen them. The King hoped by this peace not only to be able to recall the soldiers who had been engaged against the rebels to his own assistance, but also to procure a detachment of Irish soldiers for the same purpose from the popish leaders. But the popish demands being very excessive,