d, and
whom he loved now, in spite of the estrangement which had resulted from
hostilities with her husband's family. He believed, too, that,
notwithstanding this cruel division, she still was sincerely attached to
him.
His hesitation to point his ordnance at the walls was inexplicable to
those who were strangers to his family history. He remained in the field
on the north side of the Castle (called by his name to this day because
of his encampment there) till it occurred to him to send a messenger to
his sister Anna with a letter, in which he earnestly requested her, as
she valued her life, to steal out of the place by the little gate to the
south, and make away in that direction to the residence of some friends.
Shortly after he saw, to his great surprise, coming from the front of the
Castle walls a lady on horseback, with a single attendant. She rode
straight forward into the field, and up the slope to where his army and
tents were spread. It was not till she got quite near that he discerned
her to be his sister Anna; and much was he alarmed that she should have
run such risk as to sally out in the face of his forces without knowledge
of their proceedings, when at any moment their first discharge might have
burst forth, to her own destruction in such exposure. She dismounted
before she was quite close to him, and he saw that her familiar face,
though pale, was not at all tearful, as it would have been in their
younger days. Indeed, if the particulars as handed down are to be
believed, he was in a more tearful state than she, in his anxiety about
her. He called her into his tent, out of the gaze of those around; for
though many of the soldiers were honest and serious-minded men, he could
not bear that she who had been his dear companion in childhood should be
exposed to curious observation in this her great grief.
When they were alone in the tent he clasped her in his arms, for he had
not seen her since those happier days when, at the commencement of the
war, her husband and himself had been of the same mind about the
arbitrary conduct of the King, and had little dreamt that they would not
go to extremes together. She was the calmest of the two, it is said, and
was the first to speak connectedly.
'William, I have come to you,' said she, 'but not to save myself as you
suppose. Why, oh, why do you persist in supporting this disloyal cause,
and grieving us so?'
'Say not that,' he replied hastily. 'If
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