And to me he was always so gentle a friend. We had so many things in common; our love for his Mother, his reverence for my Father's goodness, justice, and wisdom; his generous appreciation of Roger; a certain protecting, shielding tenderness we both had for Lettice, who was, indeed, a creature so tender, and dependent, and willful, so likely to rush into trouble, so sure to feel it, that no womanly heart could help feeling motherlike toward her. Yet there always seemed a kind of half-acknowledged barrier between us, even from the first, more distinctly acknowledged afterwards, which gave a strange mixture of frankness and reserve, of nearness and separation, to our intercourse; wherein, perhaps, lay something of its charm. And across this world of ours flashed from time to time during those months lofty visions of nobleness and wisdom from other spheres; especially during the last six weeks when the Parliament was in recess, and many a worthy head found a night's shelter in the guest-chamber at Netherby. Mr. Hampden was in Scotland as Parliamentary Commissioner, keeping watch over the king; Mr. Pym, at his lodgings in Gray's Inn Lane, keeping guard for the nation. But Mr. Cromwell went home in the recess to his family at Ely, and spent some hours with us on his way back to London. He was forty-two years old then, my Father said, and his hair was not without some tinge of gray; tall, all but six feet in stature, and firmly knit. Many things seemed to lie hidden in the depths of his grave eyes; a subdued fire of temper flashing forth at times sufficiently to show that at the heart of this gravity lay not ice but fire; a hearty humour, as of a soul at liberty, grasping its purpose firmly enough to be able to give it play--keen to descry likenesses in things unlike, inner differences in things similar, absurdities in things decorous, and the meaning of men and things in general through all seemings. Yet withal, capacities and traces of heart-deep sorrow, as of one who had looked into the depths on many sides and found them unfathomable. Moreover, above all, his were eyes which saw; not merely windows through which you looked into the soul. Aunt Gretel said there was a look in him which made her think of a portrait of Dr. Luther which she had seen in her youth. He loved music, too, which was another resemblance to Dr. Luther. He was always kind to us children, and now he spoke fondly of his two "little wenches" at home--Bridget (afterwards Mistress Ireton), a little beyond my age, and Elizabeth (Mistress Claypole), then about eleven, his dearly-loved daughter; and the two blithe little ones, Mary and Frances, about five and three. Methought his eyes rested with a sorrowful yearning on Roger; and my Father told us, after he left, he had only two years before, in May, buried his eldest son Robert, about nineteen, which was Roger's age. This son was buried far from home, at Felsted Church in Essex; a youth whose promise had