What effect this appeal might have had upon Cuthbert had he been alone with Juxon, and subjected to all the strength with which it would have been urged home upon him, we cannot say; for it was no sooner spoken, than the Puritan chaplain fell upon his knees, and poured forth a prayer for the cause of the Parliament, which, by its solemn tone and intense fervency, commanded the silent and breathless attention of both. It was evident that this petitioner, with an enthusiasm that has been felt perhaps in common by some of every creed and party under the cope of heaven, identified the particular cause which he himself had espoused with that of truth and of God. Before he had uttered the first brief sentence of adoration, Cuthbert had fallen down in a lowly posture of worship,--and his spirit was soon carried by his leader in prayer whithersoever he would. Juxon leaned his head against the wall where he stood, and kept his eyes fixed on them. He had before him one of those rarely endowed beings on whom gifts without measure had been poured:--for a quarter of an hour he listened, with a painful and solemn interest, to a flow of real eloquence. The petitions touched in succession every point at issue. They justified, as by divine command, the appeal to arms, and proclaimed the end thereof to be reformation and peace. They recognised the sacredness of the King’s anointed head; and they ended in a prophetic anticipation of the days of millennial glory, and the universal reign of a manifested God. In the course of the prayer he had not forgotten to pray for all mankind, and especially for all those enemies who now stood opposed to them in the present contest, and again in a yet more especial manner for the near and dear relations, whose wishes and entreaties they were now called on to resist, and whose hearts they might now afflict. Painting this resistance most truly, as the highest order of self-denial, he urged it as a sacred duty, and a sacrifice well pleasing to the Lord. Juxon saw by the expression of Cuthbert’s mouth the new and stronger resolutions he was making;--nor did it surprise him to see that, when they rose together at the conclusion of this fervent prayer, the chaplain took Cuthbert by the hand, that was passively yielded, and led him forth from the church without either of them addressing one word to himself. They looked at him, indeed, with seriousness, if not with compassion, and they moved their lips, but the whispered ejaculations of their hearts had no voice; and their departing footsteps were the only sounds that broke the silence of the place and of the hour. CHAP. VII. Thy friend put in thy bosom: wear his eyes, Still in thy heart, that he may see what’s there. HERBERT.