As I stood there listening keenly, and wondering what all this pother was about (for of course I did not know), I heard the heavy tramp of many feet, coming as it seemed towards me from the other side, and presently a dark, blurred mass of men hove dimly through the fog, then stopped suddenly, and broke out muttering--dismayed, no doubt, to find an unexpected ditch before them. Bidding my men draw back, I stepped up to the edge. "Who’s that? Whom are you for?" I called across. "The king," a voice replied. "Which king?" I asked. "King Monmouth!" came the loud, bold answer, and then, as if by one consent, the Rebel battle-cry rolled forth like thunder: "God with us!" I never heard so great a shout, and as it spread among the teeming thousands on the moor behind, it seemed to shake the very earth; it was as though all England raised her voice to Heaven. Barely had that great cry died away when drums and bugles sounded, matchlocks broke out in a dazzling blaze, and bullets screamed across the ditch by hundreds. Our infantry had now come up, while Churchill with the horse, having found a crossing lower down, charged like a whirlwind on the rebel flank and rear. The battle had begun in right good earnest. And what a battle! The fog-bound darkness, which made it hard to tell a foe from a friend, added to its horrors. The crash of musketry; the roar of cannon and the clash of steel; the cries, and shrieks, and groans--all this still rises up before me like some ugly nightmare, even as I write these words. And what was my own part therein? Well, as I said before, I had no desire to kill my fellow-countrymen, but when a roaring, wild-eyed fellow comes a-mowing at you with a pike, or scythe stuck endwise on a pole, you must do something, and--well, I did it; and, as the fight went on, I had to do it many times, until at length the sword which had been girded on me by my father in that quiet study had indeed a sorry tale of death to tell. And here, my friends, a word of warning, or at least of clean confession. The rack of battle raises Cain in man, until he comes to kill unthinkingly, if not with grim delight. Beware!