It is said, most of those who fell on the king's side fell standing firm, and of ours running away; which means, I suppose, that they lost their bravest, and we our cowards. I found my Father, and many of the soldiers I know, always loth to speak much of the battle-field after a battle. My Father and Roger would discuss by the hour the handling of troops and the strategy of the commanders, and all which related to war as an art or a science, and regarded the troops as pieces on a board. But of the after-misery, when the terrible excitement and the skillful manœuvres of the day were over, and the troops and regiments had again become only men, wounded, weary, dead, I never heard them to speak save in a few broken words. The difference of language served a little to veil the common humanity in the German wars, my Father said; but to hear the fallen entreating for quarter, or the dying calling on God and on dear familiar names, or the wounded praying for help which, in the rush of the battle, could not be given, in the old mother-tongue, was enough, he said, to take all the pomp and glory out of war, and to leave it nothing but its agony and its horror. Both sides claimed the victory,--Lord Essex by right of encamping on the field, and the king (some said) by the weight of Prince Rupert's plunder. However that might be, neither side pursued the advantage they both boasted to have gained. The king, who was between the Parliament army and London, to the great anxiety of the city, did not advance, but retired on Oxford,--the Parliament garrison of Banbury, however, surrendering to him without a struggle. Lord Essex made no pursuit, but withdrawing to London, left the country open to Prince Rupert's foragers. But victory or defeat were scarcely the chief questions to us women that day at Netherby. Margery's anxieties were the first relieved. Her husband Dickon being in the king's army, sent her an orange scarf taken from a Parliament horseman at Keinton, in token of his safety. Then, on Wednesday, poor Tim, Gammer Grindle's half-witted grandson, who would, in spite of all that could be said, follow Roger to the war, came limping into the village, emaciated and footsore, with his arm bound up in a sling. He stopped at Rachel Forster's door, and began stammering a confused account of Master Roger and Job lying wounded at Keinton, and the prince's men murdering some of the wounded, and carrying off Roger and Job, pinioned, in a cart to gaol, and Tim's trying to follow on foot, and having his arm broken by a musket-shot, and his leg wounded, and so, being left behind, having limped home to tell Mistress Olive.