Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for the gallop. His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces, and no more. They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of Cromwell bade them fight with sullen hardihood. At the end of, it might be, fifteen minutes they had regained a foot or two of their lost ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like succour, how it fared. "As may be," growled the other. "If so thou’rt not dead, as we fancied, get down and hearten them." "I’ve a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell, with a deep, unhumorous laugh. "I’ll get down." He mounted with some difficulty. Pluck cannot always conquer in a moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body. Once in the saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late. Rupert’s men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit. Cromwell, after narrow escape of being ridden down by his own folk, after vain efforts to rally them again, found himself alone. The wound in his throat was throbbing at its bandages. The rain ran down him in rivulets, and the world seemed filled with thunder and the cries of men. Word reached him that Eythin, too, had broken through, and that all Parliament men were bidden to save themselves as best they might. And so he left the field; and the sickness of defeat, more powerful than body-sickness, caught him as he neared the smithy, this side of Tockwith village. A farm-lad, returning from selling a cow at Boroughbridge, found him in the roadway, fallen from his horse, and carried him into the smithy-house. They tended his wound. Within an hour his lusty strength of purpose came to his aid. He asked for meat and ale, and said he must get ready for the road. He was known by this time; but even the blacksmith, Royalist to the core of his big body, would not hinder his going. A man of this breed must be given his chance, he felt. "After all," he muttered, watching Cromwell ride unsteadily down the moonlit road, "they say Marston Moor has lost Yorkshire to the Parliament for good and all. Some call him Old Noll, and othersome Old Nick—but he’ll do little harm i’ these parts now, I reckon." "A soft heart and a big body—they go always fools in company," said his goodwife. "I’d not have let him go so easy, I." "Ay, but ye wod, if I’d been for keeping him. Ye’re like a weather-cock, daft wife. When I point south, thou’st always for veering round to north—or t’other way about, just as it chances."