So the summer days went on, and England had never been so serene and so secure in her strength and prosperity. Throughout the land the farmer was busy in his meadows making hay, and watching the green wheat blow yellow in the warm winds and sunshine. The shepherds were on the fells counting the ewes and their lambs; the traders busy in their shops; the ports full of entering and departing vessels, and the whole nation yet in a mood of triumph over the acquisition of Dunkirk. Cromwell was working feverishly, and suffering acutely. His favourite child, the Lady Elizabeth Claypole was still very ill; he had premonitions and visions of calamity that filled his heart with apprehension, and kept his soul always on the alert, watching, watching for its coming. It might be that he alone could meet it and ward it away from those he loved. It is certain also that he knew the time for his own departure was at hand. He said to Doctor Verity, "I have one more fight, John. Dunbar was a great victory; Worcester was a greater one; but my next fight will give me the greatest victory of all—’the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ Do you understand?" And the Doctor made a movement of affirmation; he could not speak. Wonderful was the labour the Protector now performed. He directed and settled the English affairs in France; he arranged the government of the new English plantations in Jamaica and the West Indies; and he paid particular attention to the needs and condition of the New England Colonies, being indeed their protector, and the only English protector they ever had. He took time to enunciate to France, more strongly than ever before, the rights of all the Protestants in Europe; and he made all preparations for calling another Parliament to consider, and settle more firmly, the business of the English Commonwealth. His work was a stupendous one, and through it all he showed constantly the feverish haste of a man who has a great task to perform and sees the sun dropping to the western horizon. But his heart bore the heaviest share of the heavy burden. It was as if Death knew that this man’s soul could only be delivered from the flesh by attacking the citadels of feeling. In every domestic and social relation—son, husband, father, friend—the tenderness of his nature made him suffer; and when on the twenty-third of July Lady Claypole’s illness showed fatal symptoms, he dropped all business, and for fourteen days and nights hardly left her presence. And her death on the sixth of August was a crushing and insupportable blow.