Lord Essex (many thought) seemed as frightened at success as at failure. Victories lulled him into fruitless negotiations; and the only thing that roused him to action was imminent ruin. Some murmured that "professional soldiers love long wars as physicians love long diseases." Some whispered of treachery, and others of Divine displeasure. The explosion of battle had come; but the only consequence seemed to be the loosening of the whole ground around, the crumbling away of the nation in all directions. Partly, no doubt, this sense of vagueness and dimness was caused by the absence from most homes and communities of the most capable and manly men in each,--in the garrisons, on the field, taking counsel with the King at Oxford, or taking counsel for the nation at Westminster. Thus events were left to be guessed and debated by old men despondent with the decay of many hopes; or women, draining in anxious imaginations the dregs of every peril they could not share in fact; or boys delighting in magnifying the dangers they hoped soon to encounter, therewith to magnify themselves in the eyes of mothers and maids. Rachel Forster, on whose gentle strength the whole village was wont to lean, was away; and Aunt Dorothy, the manliest heart left among us, had a belief in the general wickedness of men, and the general going wrong of things in this evil world, which was anything but reassuring to those whose fears were quickened with the life-blood of more vivid hopes than hers. Thus we were ripe for all kinds of credulities that winter at Netherby. I can remember nothing rising prominently out of the general hum and fog except two convictions, which enlarged before us steadily, becoming more solid instead of more shadowy as they came nearer. The first was the impossibility of trusting the King. The second was that everything went right where Colonel Cromwell was; for by this time he was Colonel Cromwell, at the head of his regiment, which he was slowly sifting and compressing into the firm invincible kernel of his invincible army. A dim, dreary time it was for us from the Edgehill Fight, in October, 1642, to the beginning of February, 1643. Roger in prison at Oxford with Job; my Father at Reading or in London with Lord Essex and the army.