Near the spot, however, there was a little copse, with some tall trees rising out of the brushwood; and, after many a painful thought, thither I retreated for shelter. As I knew not who might visit the field from the town, and as I had heard that the people of the neighbourhood were rank Roundheads, I thought it best to climb one of the oaks; and there I watched till the dawn of morning. Hardly was the sky grey with the first light when I saw six or seven people coming over the Downs with spades and shovels, and I soon found that their purpose was to bury the dead. By them that office was performed decently enough on the spot itself; and in about three or four hours it was all over, leaving no trace of the skirmish, but the turf beaten up by the horses' feet, and here and there died with gore, and the long low mound of fresh earth which covered the trench containing the dead bodies. I found, by the conversation of the men employed, that this act of charity had been performed by order of some persons in the little town who had witnessed the affair; and who, partly moved by a sense of decency, and partly with a view to salubrity, had caused the corpses to be thus covered over with earth. I was now, like many another, alone in all the earth; without friends, or home, or resource; without money, or protection, or expectation; but perhaps I was better fitted for such circumstances than any one who was ever yet cast an orphan upon the world. I was accustomed to rely upon myself alone; to take every event as I found it; and I had been so long in the habit of seeing the sunshine and the shade, the defeat and the triumph, the disaster and the success, succeed each other like April clouds and beams, that though my heart was full of mourning for my father, yet I confidently anticipated that the next cast of the die in fortune's hand would reverse my fate, and bring me back to prosperity again. I was mistaken, however. A long series of sufferings ensued; and they were sufferings of a nature that I had never encountered before. I had often, indeed, undergone privation, and known poverty. I had often been more than one day without tasting food, and had slept for many a night together on the bare ground; but all these inconveniences were part of the soldier's fate, matters which, however unpleasant at the time, were laughed at and forgotten as soon as they were over. Now, however, I had to endure poverty without one alleviating circumstance, or one consoling reflection.