ld man turned sharply on his heel to leave the
camp, which he did easily enough, for he knew several of the sentries.
Even if he had not known them, it would have made little difference,
because our sentries were so lax that the camp was always swarming with
strangers. Women came to see their husbands or sweethearts. Boys came
out of love of mischief. Men came out of curiosity, or out of some wish
to see things before they decided which side to take. Our captains were
never sure at night how many of their men would turn up at muster the
next morning.

After the old man had deserted, I sat down on the high ground above the
camp, in the earthen battery where our four little guns were mounted. I
was oppressed with a sad feeling that we were all marching to death. The
old man's words, "we shall have troops all round us," rang in my head,
till I could have cried. My mind was full of terrible imaginings. I
saw our army penned up in a little narrow valley where the roads were
quagmires, so that our guns were stuck in the mud, our horses up to
their knees, our men floundering. On the hills all round us I saw
the King's armies, fifty thousand strong, marching to music under the
colours, firing, then wheeling, forming with a glint of pikes, bringing
up guns at a gallop, shooting us down, while we in the mud tried to
form. I knew that the end of it all would be a little clump of men round
the Duke, gathered together on a hillock, holding out to the last. The
men would be dropping as the shot struck them. The wounded would waver,
letting their pike-points drop. Then' there would come a whirling of
cavalry, horses' eyes in the smoke, bright iron horse-shoes gleaming,
swords crashing down on us, an eddy of battle which would end in a hush
as the last of us died. I saw all these pictures in my brain, as clearly
as one sees in a dream. You must not wonder that I looked over the misty
fields towards Newenham Abbey with a sort of longing to be there, well
out of all the war. It was only a mile from me. I could slip away so
easily. I was not bound to stay where I was, to share in the misery
caused by my leader's want of skill. Then I remembered how my father had
believed in the right of the Duke's cause. He would have counselled me
to stay, I thought. It seemed to me, in the dusk of the night, that my
father was by me, urging me to stay. The thought was very blessed; it
cleared away all my troubles as though they had not been. I decided
t