"One good sign is that three rebel Earls--Bedford, Holland, and Clare--have returned to their allegiance. The Earl of Holland raised the militia for the Parliament, so that he hath somewhat to repent of. There is much discussion how they should be received; the elder Cavaliers recommending a politic forgetting of their offence; but we, who are younger, desire they should be received as naughty children, if not with reproaches, at most with a cool and lofty indifference, to show we need them not. It would not look well to be too glad. And, moreover, they are three more claimants for the royal grace, and the faithful like not that the faithless should be better served than they who have borne the burden and heat of the day. "I thought prosperity would have made us one, but it seems otherwise. "And Harry says the noblest is gone. The noblest, he says, always fall the first victims in such conflicts as these, so that the strife grows more cruel, and baser from year to year. "The Lord Falkland was slain at Newbury. He was missing on the evening of the fight, but all through the night they hoped he might have been taken prisoner. On the morrow, however, they found him among the slain, 'Only too glad to receive his discharge,' Harry said. On the morning of the battle he was of good cheer, as was his wont; his spirits rising at the approach of danger. His friends urged him not to go into the battle, he having no command, but he would not be kept away. He rode gallantly on in the front ranks of Lord Byron's regiment, between two hedges, behind which the Roundheads had planted their musketeers. 'I am weary of the times,' he said to those who urged him to withdraw; 'I foresee much misery to my country, but I believe I shall be out of it before night.' "And so he was; and needeth now no more dolefully to moan for 'Peace, peace!' as so often in these last months. He is singing it now, we trust, where good men understand all perplexed things, and each other. "Falkland and Hampden! Alas! how many more before the peace songs are chanted here on earth! "The two right hands are cold and stiff through which the king and the nation might have been clasped together again in fellowship. "Who, or what, will reunite us now?" CHAPTER IX. The winter of 1642-43 was one of uneasy uncertainty to us at Netherby. The whole world seemed to lie dim and hazy, as if wrapped in the heavy folds of a November fog. The next villages seemed to become far-off and foreign, in the unsettled state of the country. There was no knowing the faces and voices of friends from those of foes, in the rapid shifting of parties. The comrade of yesterday was the opponent of to-day. Who could say what the comrade of to-day might be to-morrow? Mr. Capel, the Member for Hertfordshire, who had been the first in Parliament to complain of grievances, had become Lord Capel, and was threatening the seven associated counties with his plunderers.