"That I may not say. I was privy to the plot. But I walked into the trap myself. I fear, sir, you will find a hole in your mantle." "You wore my cloak?" Evander asked, in wonder. "You died for me?" "Ah, why did you not warn?" Brilliana cried. Halfman moved his head feebly. "I did not want to live." "But you shall live," Brilliana insisted, prayed. Halfman laughed very faintly. "I do not think so. I am an old soldier, and--ah!" He gave a great gasp. Then suddenly lifted himself a little and saluted Brilliana as if on parade. "Here, my sweet warrior," he said, clearly. He looked fixedly at Brilliana and declaimed, "I did hear you speak, far above singing." Then his chin dropped; his head fell back on the supporting arms. Evander touched him, turned to Brilliana. "Alas! he's sped." The only sound in the silent room was the weeping of Brilliana in Evander's arms. EPILOGUE Master Marfleet in his "Diurnal" hides in his prolixities some particulars interesting to us. Thus we learn incidentally from some reflections on the wickedness of the great, that while the King reigned in Oxford--to Master Marfleet he is always the "Man of Blood" when he is not Nebuchadnezzar--Lady Brilliana Harby was in such favor at the court and with the Queen as to obtain patents of knighthood for two neighbors of hers, one Paul Hungerford and one Peter Rainham. We further learn that Brilliana accompanied the Queen--in whom Mr. Marfleet traces a remarkable likeness to Jezebel--to France in 1644, after which "flight of kites, crows, and other carrion fowl"--the words are Mr. Marfleet's--the estate of Harby came, through the good offices of General Cromwell, into the hands of Colonel Evander Cloud, much to Mr. Marfleet's satisfaction, a satisfaction which the school-master did not live long enough to lose. Of Colonel Cloud's honorable military career we find a brief but eminently satisfactory account in Corporal Blow-the-Trumpet-against-Jericho Pring's pamphlet--now more than scarce--entitled "The Roll-Call of the Regiments of Zion." From a letter of Colonel Cloud's, preserved in the Perrington Papers (_Historical Manuscripts Commission_, vol. XCIX., B), we learn that after Naseby the writer found among the dying the person of Sir Rufus Quaryll. "As God may forgive me," he writes, "I had sought for this man in encounter after encounter, with black thoughts of vengeance in my bosom. But as he lay there I felt constrained by divine impulse to forgive him, though he made me no answer but to curse horribly at me and at the fool who took my place; and so passed away, as I fear, very impenitent."